TOPLINE:

A structured end-of-life care model, Acute Basic Palliation Concept (ABPC), improved symptom relief in patients in Danish general practice, with 51% of cases using the model showing better ratings for the management of pain, agitation, and discomfort. The model was well received by relatives and healthcare professionals, with most GPs and municipal nurses willing to use it again.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a cohort study (September 2024 to July 2025) in Northern Denmark and involved 29 GPs from nine general practice clinics and 10 representatives from regional out-of-hours GP services.
• The ABPC model was created for hospital use, featuring a sealed box with medicine and utensils for 5 days, a physician checklist, patient information pamphlets, care instructions for dying patients, decision support tools for nurses, electronic instructions for doctors, and a standardised legal text for medical charts.
• GPs identified patients in the "standard care" group including those who had initiated and received end-of-life care in the past 6 months. Consecutively, they enrolled eligible adult patients with an estimated prognosis of days to a few weeks.
• A total of 74 end-of-life care trajectories were analysed, with 51% managed using the structured care model; GPs and municipal nurses assessed the model's usefulness on a 0-100 scale and their willingness to use it again.
• Primary outcomes were symptom relief for pain, shortness of breath, agitation, and discomfort on the basis of responses from relatives. Secondary outcomes included evaluations of the model's usefulness and time consumption by healthcare providers.

TAKEAWAY:

• Relatives reported better symptom management in the ABPC group than in the standard care group, with more positive ratings observed for pain management (P = .018) and improvements seen in the management of agitation (P = .002) and discomfort (P < .001).
• Municipal nurses rated the ABPC model highly for its usefulness, with all respondents expressing a willingness to use it again.
• GPs prescribed more of the recommended medications from the start when using the ABPC model, with reduced visits noted for additional prescriptions.
• Most GPs indicated that the concept enhanced the quality of end-of-life care they delivered.

IN PRACTICE:

"The ABPC demonstrated feasibility and effectiveness in general practice, suggesting potential to strengthen basic palliative care outside hospital settings," the authors wrote.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Matilde Alida Arendt Eriksen, Department of Emergency Medicine and Trauma Center, EMRUn, Aalborg University Hospital, Aalborg, Denmark. It was published online on January 26, 2026, in BJGP Open.

LIMITATIONS:

Questionnaires were not validated, and the sample size was modest. Variations in GP experience and practice type could have affected care delivery and reception. The study's context within the Danish primary care system may have limited its applicability to other healthcare systems.

DISCLOSURES:

This study received support from BETA.HEALTH sponsored by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the North Denmark Regional Innovation Foundation, and Lilly og Herbert Hansens Fond. The authors had no conflicts of interest to disclose.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.