COVID-19: Addressing the needs of palliative and hospice patients by pandemic response teams of health facilities-preliminary results of the pallpan project

Background: To cope with COVID-19 health on facility and welfare organisation level, care facilities convened pandemic response teams (PRT). Pandemic measures restricted usual care efforts for patients with and without SARS-CoV2 in their end of life. The German PallPanconsortium investigates palliative care aspects during the pandemic. Aim: To examine SARS-CoV2 PRT in Germany in terms of their experiences of end-of-life care problems, solutions and challenges. Methods: Semi-structured qualitative expert video/telephone-interviews with members of health care facility PRT (10/2020-2/2021) and structured content analyses of the interviews. Results: 21 interviews on 22 PRT (15 facilities and 7 welfare organisations) were analysed. Of the participants (33-68 y;28.6% female) 76.2% were health care professionals or administrative staff and others (23.8%). 15 organisations provided specialized palliative care services. Main issues, the PRT reacted to, were organisational (e.g. hygiene material procurement, personal capacities, local pandemic plans), structural (e.g. preparedness for high incidences), informational (e.g. structure and share a multitude of sometimes contradictory information) and patientrelated. Active measures on frequent end-of-life care issues such as social contact restrictions, family carers and team members' burdens and worries were reported for 13 PRT. Their reactions included recommending individual decision-making, enabling and inducing creative alternatives to routines, e.g. saying goodbyes outdoor. Decisions with ethical impact such as isolation measures in long-term care facilities and conflicting priorities on SARS-CoV2 protection and patients' quality of life and care challenged the PRT. Conclusion: The results indicate that needs of patients in end-of-life care were subordinate to other challenges. Further results of the ongoing analysis on public administration level will be presented.