Spanish and Portuguese Societies of Internal Medicine consensus guideline about best practice in end-of-life care.

Aim: To develop consensus recommendations about good clinical practice rules for caring end-of-life patients.
Methods: A steering committee of 12 Spanish and Portuguese experts proposed 37 recommendations. A two rounds Delphi method was performed, with participation of 105 panelists including internists, other clinicians, nurses, patients, lawyers, bioethicians, health managers, politicians and journalists. We sent a questionnaire with 5 Likert-type answers for each recommendation. Strong consensus was defined when >95% answers were completely agree or >90% were agree or completely agree; and weak consensus when >90% answers were completely agree or >80% were agree or completely agree.
Results: The panel addressed 7 specific areas for 37 recommendations spanning: identification of patients; knowledge of the disease, values and preferences of the patient; information; patient's needs; support and care; palliative sedation, and after death care.
Conclusions: The panel formulated and provided the rationale for recommendations on good clinical practice rules for caring end-of-life patients.
(Copyright © 2020 Elsevier España, S.L.U. and Sociedad Española de Medicina Interna (SEMI). All rights reserved.)