Paramedics commonly face acute crises of patients in palliative care, but their involvement in end-of-life care is not planned systematically.
To evaluate a protocol for end-of-life care at home including pre-planned integration of paramedics and end-of-life care wards.
Paramedic visits to patients in end-of-life care protocol were retrospectively studied.
All of the patients who had registered for the protocol between 1 March 2015 and 28 February 2017 in North Karelia, Finland, were included in this study.
A total of 256 patients were registered for the protocol and 306 visits by paramedic were needed. A need for symptom control (38%) and transportation (29%) were the most common reasons for a visit. Paramedics visited 43% and 70% of the patients in areas with and without 24/7 palliative home care services, respectively (p?