Participants and study design

Data on symptom presence and severity were collected during four weeks in September and November 2018 in a nation-wide cross-sectional survey among patients with palliative care needs, regardless of their underlying illness. Physicians and nurses working in different care settings were asked to participate in data collection (general practices, nursing homes, hospices and outpatient departments and clinical wards of academic and community hospitals). Clinicians were asked to identify patients with palliative care needs, using a negative answer to the one-year surprise question as the sole inclusion criterion (answer “No” to the question “Would I be surprised if this patient died within the next twelve months?”)²⁰. Patients unable or unwilling to self-assess their symptoms were excluded. In this study we performed a secondary analysis of collected data of patients with advanced cancer.