Title: PALCARESEVA-A pharos amidst the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic: a rural palliative care center experience

Abstract:

Advanced cancer patients often require clinic or hospital follow but, it becomes difficult for the patients to attend the same due to financial, commute and logistic issues. To maintain this continuum of care we started PALLCARESEVA-a telephonic service as an adjunct to clinical follow up. The present study is an audit of the telephonic calls attended and feedback from the caregivers about the service developed. PALLCARESEVA is a telephonic follow up service presently being done for advanced cancer patients. This study was a retrospective audit of the records and subsequent feedback on the service provided to the patients. About 277 calls were attended within duration of 5 months (June 2020 to October 2020). The patients who consulted the palliative care physician during the week (Monday to Friday) were called on Saturday by a trained personal to enquire about improvement of symptoms, new symptoms and any other issues. For the patient who needed assistance the palliative care physician was involved and appropriate intervention was provided.

Biography:

Chaitanya Patil has completed MBBS from Belgaum Institute of Medical Sciences, Belgaum, Karnataka (2011) and MD in community medicine from Indira Gandhi Government Medical College, Nagpur, Maharashtra (2017). Further, he has pursued a post-doctoral fellowship in palliative care and psycho-oncology from Tata Medical Center, Kolkata, West Bengal (2019). He has an accredited degree in palliative care by the British Medical Journal and Indian Association of Palliative care (2021). He is an associate editor for Revista Medicine Journal. He is the author/ co-author of 30 publications with 65 citations of his research in international and national peer-reviewed journals. He is a reviewer for various journals.