Nine in ten Canadians believe palliative care should be universally accessible. But fewer than six in ten think they could actually get it if they needed it.
That is the finding of a new poll by the Angus Reid Institute.
The poll also shows the vast majority of Canadians would consider palliative care if they became seriously ill.
Rebecca Vachon, health program director at Cardus, a think tank that partnered with the Angus Reid Institute on the survey, says she hopes the data prompt governments to increase their focus on palliative care.
“I hope that this data reminds policymakers of how important palliative care is to Canadians, that it is a real priority,” she said.
Misconceptions
The report shows many Canadians have an incomplete understanding of palliative care.
Two-thirds of the Canadians surveyed said palliative care is only for people who are very close to dying.
In practice, palliative care does include hospice care, which is care that provides comfort for people at the end of their lives. But palliative care is also about helping improve the quality of life for people with terminal illnesses and their families, and can be offered at the same time as disease treatments.
However, most Canadians who receive palliative care only receive it when they are dying.
In 2021 and 2022, nearly 60 per cent of Canadians who died received palliative care, a report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information showed. Of those, half only started receiving it 22 days before they died.
The public’s misunderstanding of palliative care does not surprise Jeff Moat, CEO of Pallium Canada, a charity that educates medical professionals, personal support workers, and unpaid caregivers about palliative care.
“We have a brand awareness issue [with palliative care],” Moat said.
And the general public are not the only ones confused about what palliative care includes.
“The majority of health-care providers still see palliative care as care that’s delivered in the last days or weeks of life,” said Moat.
That concerns him. If patients receive palliative care when they are diagnosed with a serious illness or disease, they can have a better quality of life as the disease progresses, he says.
Training more people in palliative care is going to be crucial as the population ages, says Moat.
“There’s no way that all of the palliative care needs of Canadians can be seen by just palliative care specialists,” he said.
“Very few Canadians actually need palliative care delivered by a specialist,” said Cheryl Spencer, interim CEO of the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association, an advocacy organization.
Medical teams that include various health professionals are best-suited to provide high-quality palliative care, she says. Palliative specialists can then be engaged to treat patients with severe pain.
Moat says he hopes that palliative care training will be incorporated into all medical education.
“In the years ahead, I think we’re going to need more providers trained in the palliative care approach,” he said.
Palliative care and MAID
The Angus Reid poll also shows a small minority of Canadians associate palliative care with ending a patient’s life.
Four per cent said they thought palliative care was the intentional administration of lethal medications. Another five per cent said that palliative care is the same as medical assistance in dying (MAID).
Vachon, from Cardus, says those questions were included to better understand if Canadians were conflating palliative care with MAID.
“It’s not a majority, but it’s still a significant number of people who are confused and misassociate palliative care with ending a patient’s life,” she said.
Moat says these responses reflect the lack of knowledge about palliative care.
“When there’s a lack of understanding [about palliative care], that airspace can get filled by other messages,” he said.
“People begin to conflate palliative care and medical assistance in dying, not through any fault of their own. When there’s not enough awareness and understanding, then people start to fill in the gaps.”
