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Presence of palliative care inpatient consultation team Presence of palliative care outpatient clinic Presence of community based / home palliative care Clinical processes (*) Presence of multidisciplinary specialized palliative care team Routine symptom screening in the outpatient oncology clinic Administration of systemic cancer therapy (e.g. chemo and targeted agents) possible in patients admitted to PC service oncology-and palliative care as well as their cultures. Local variations in terms of resources and practices also probably play a role. By acknowledging integration of oncology and PC as a complex process including different parts of the health care system, both horizontally and vertically, and also involving the patient, we propose SCPs as a means for future efforts to promote integration. For the same reasons, this paper will address integration in different panels. Each panel will address different aspects of integration, ranging from how to focus on the patient, to societal changes and new research areas. Introduction of panels Policy-challenges and frameworks Societal challenges Prognostication Patient-centredness-content methodology and clinical implications Models of palliative care integration The role of education: challenges and recommendations Research The commission is an international collaboration between 30 experts in oncology, PC, public health and psycho-oncology. In October 2016 a kick-off meeting was held in Milan where panel leaders were appointed, the structure of the commission was decided, and a plan for the work was agreed upon. During the two following years each panel expanded with experts within the relevant field, conducted topical literature searches, and an interactive writing process was conducted. Both administrative and academic organization were run from Norway, by Stein Kaasa, Jon Håvard Loge and Tonje Lundeby. Policy-challenges and frameworks Questions to be addressed What type of recommendations is given for integration at the national and international level on policy and public health at present? What are the current examples of different practices in organization of palliative care in different national policies in European countries? What kind of policies and approaches are needed for integration of oncology and palliative care? Patient-centredness-content, methodology and clinical implications Questions to be addressed What is patient-centredness? What are the main elements of patient-centred care in practice? How do we involve the family? Communication-a necessary tool for patient-centred care What are the barriers and solutions to succeed? Research Questions to be addressed What are some opportunities and challenges for integrating oncology and palliative care teams to conduct research together? What are some key research priorities related to integration of palliative care and oncology? What are some key research priorities related to symptom assessment and treatment? What are some key research priorities related to psychosocial support, communication and dec...

Unidimensional scales are the easiest to administer and have been most widely used. The authors recommend the use of the EORTC QLQ C30 fatigue subscale or the FACT F. The FQ gives a multidimensional assessment and has also been widely used. A substantial minority of the scales identified have not been used extensively or sufficiently validated in cancer patients and cannot be recommended for routine use without further validation.

BackgroundClinicians are inaccurate at predicting survival. The ‘Surprise Question’ (SQ) is a screening tool that aims to identify people nearing the end of life. Potentially, its routine use could help identify patients who might benefit from palliative care services. The objective was to assess the accuracy of the SQ by time scale, clinician, and speciality.MethodsSearches were completed on Medline, Embase, CINAHL, AMED, Science Citation Index, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Open Grey literature (all from inception to November 2016). Studies were included if they reported the SQ and were written in English. Quality was assessed using the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale.ResultsA total of 26 papers were included in the review, of which 22 reported a complete data set. There were 25,718 predictions of survival made in response to the SQ. The c-statistic of the SQ ranged from 0.512 to 0.822. In the meta-analysis, the pooled accuracy level was 74.8% (95% CI 68.6–80.5). There was a negligible difference in timescale of the SQ. Doctors appeared to be more accurate than nurses at recognising people in the last year of life (c-statistic = 0.735 vs. 0.688), and the SQ seemed more accurate in an oncology setting 76.1% (95% CI 69.7–86.3).ConclusionsThere was a wide degree of accuracy, from poor to reasonable, reported across studies using the SQ. Further work investigating how the SQ could be used alongside other prognostic tools to increase the identification of people who would benefit from palliative care is warranted.Trial registrationPROSPERO CRD42016046564.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12916-017-0907-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.