A Way to Screen for Suffering in Palliative Care

Abstract

We report a new tool for screening the suffering of terminally ill patients in a palliative care service. We systematically asked 371 terminal oncological and AIDS patients on 665 different occasions, “How long did yesterday seem to you?”; we then asked them to assess their current condition. The simple answer about subjective length of time correlated well with subjective suffering in approximately half the patients. Thus it may be a good starting point for future assessment and more extensive explorations.