提升死亡識能以提供高品質晚期癌症照護

Early palliative care intervention has been the goal of end stage oncology care, and this could be achieved by improving the death literacy. Death literacy is deemed to be a set of knowledge and skills that make one possible to gain access to understand and act upon end-of-life (EOL) or death care options. Through promoting the four aspects of death literacy-knowledge, skill, experiential learning, and social action, the potential cancer patients who need palliative care could be identified by the multidisciplinary medical team earlier, and the patients' and families' misunderstanding on disease progression, prognosis and care plan could also be minimized. A high-quality oncology care with the integration of palliative care could then be provided to patients in accordance to their wishes to improve their EOL quality. By doing this, patients and families could receive a coherent and consistent care from diagnosis to the EOL. However, the culture of collective decision-making and the custom to not telling the truth to the patients about their disease condition could be the obstacles for the development of death literacy and a challenge for the healthcare system in the future.