Palliative care: Questions to ask
If you are asked about symptom control then the indication may be obvious, but ask about the likely cause, and establish what the patient has tried already. You will also usually need to find out what other medicines the patient is taking, and their other significant medical problems. You’ll need to know whether they are able to take medicines orally, and if they can’t what other routes are available (so the intramuscular and rectal routes may be unsuitable if they have low platelets for example).
If you are asked about mixing medicines in a syringe driver then you’ll need to find out the dose of each medicine, the diluent used and the infusion volume (if known).
The 'questions to ask' from every tutorial on this site have been brought together into a Quick Question Guide that you may want to download for future reference.