Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

BACKGROUND: Access to palliative care by persons with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI) is low when compared to those without mental illness. This results in poor management of pain and acute ailments, and low quality of life for persons with SPMI. OBJECTIVE: To identify the rate of access to palliative care by persons with SPMI, the factors that influence the access to palliative care and gaps that need to be addressed. METHODS: This research will be a quantitative descriptive study that would employ a retrospective cohort design. Data for this study would be anonymized data from interRAI home care database, which is linked to the Discharge Abstract Database (DAD, which captures clinical and discharge information on hospital discharges) and the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS, which captures visits to community-based and facility-based ambulatory care). Access to palliative care by persons with SPMI will be measured by the number of contacts a person with SPMI has had with palliative care teams from prognosis or self-report of palliative care as a goal of care to the time of death. The relative rate of access to palliative care would be measured by comparing the rate of access to palliative care by persons with SPMI to those without. The study would also identify intersectionality between various factors that determine rate of access to palliative care among persons with SPMI. Results will be presented as descriptive statistics of demographic and other variables and relative rate of access to palliative care by presence of SPMI compared to those without SPMI. Results of bivariate and multivariate models of factors associated with access to palliative care by persons with SPMI will also be presented.