- Appropriate referral timing to specialized palliative care service: survey of bereaved families of cancer patients who died in palliative care units

Patients’ evaluation of their first SPC referral timing according to the actual time physicians first referred patients to SPC. The evaluation was classified into four referral timing groups: “late” and “too late” were coded as “evaluated as late,” and “early” and “too early” were coded as “evaluated as early,” “appropriate” was coded as “evaluated as appropriate,” and “none of these” (bereaved families did not know how patients had evaluated their first SPC referral timing). *1Activities of daily living, *2functional stats as Karnofsky Performance Status Scale ≤ 40