85 Background: Traditionally, palliative care in most hospitals is delivered through consult-based services i.e relying on the primary physician to initiate a referral to a palliative care specialist. Supportive and Palliative Care Review Kit (SPARK) is a newly developed integrated model of care that involves a Palliative Consultant and an Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) co-rounding with the oncologist to provide bedside palliative care advice alongside the oncology team. Methods: To evaluate the effect of this new model on staff outcomes of teamwork and job satisfaction, a survey was conducted in March 2018 before the new SPARK model was started and 1 year later in March 2019. The survey was adapted from the Primary Care Team Dynamics Survey and Physician Worklife Survey, with higher scores indicating better outcomes. Categorical variables were analysed using chi-square test and continuous variables were analysed using student’s t-test. Results: Before the new SPARK model was started in March 2018, email invitations were sent to 89 oncology and palliative care physicians. Fifty five complete responses was received (61.8% response rate). A year after the new SPARK model was started, email invitations were sent to 23 oncology and palliative care physicians who had experienced the new model of care, of which 8 complete responses were returned (34% response rate). There was no significant differences in demographics between the two time points and in the total and domain scores between before and after SPARK. In the ‘personal time’ domain of the physician worklife survey, scores were better after SPARK (73.8± 6.68) compared to before SPARK (68.4 ± 8.70). This may be due to increased independence experienced by the APN co-rounding with the oncology team. The flexibility in team-rounding creates more personal time allowing the APN to be involved in other non-clinical tasks. Conclusions: While there were no statistically significant differences in the overall work experience, team dynamics and job satisfaction one year after the SPARK model, this may be due to small sample size.
Palliative care is an important aspect of heart failure management
