Introduction

People with incurable lung cancer typically have a prognosis of weeks or short months and most can benefit from proactive and responsive palliative care.

With this Clinical Management Pathway, we intend to improve the quality and reliability of palliative care that people with advanced lung cancer, and their families, can expect. We will achieve this through the establishment of an agreed pathway of care, offered to all people with lung cancer who are for Palliative Care.

Ultimately, we know that many wider patient groups, including those receiving palliative cancer treatments, can benefit from a similar palliative care approach. However, the CMP will focus in the first instance on improving care for the patient population who is for Best Supportive Care (BSC), for whom coordinated, reliable palliative care can be lacking.

The intention is that every person with lung cancer who is for Palliative Care is offered a comprehensive conversation and assessment, that this is shared promptly with their wider healthcare teams, and that each of these patients and their families and carers are offered tailored written and digitally available information about the care and support that they can expect, and how they can access this.

The ‘Palliative Cancer Care Summary’ and Palliative Lung Cancer Care information resource can be utilised by any team in Scotland for their patients with incurable lung cancer, including those undergoing cancer treatment, if they feel that it would be helpful.

It is important to acknowledge that there is significant variation in how primary and secondary healthcare services are configured and resourced across Scotland, and that there is further variation in third sector and social care support. A ‘one size’ model is therefore not appropriate or feasible.