This information was originally presented at the NCCN 23rd Annual Conference: Improving the Quality, Effectiveness, and Efficiency of Cancer Care held in Orlando, Florida, from March 22 - 24, 2018.

The NCCN Guidelines for Palliative Care provide interdisciplinary recommendations on palliative care for patients with cancer. These NCCN Guidelines Insights summarize and provide context for the updated guidelines recommendations regarding hospice and end-of-life (EOL) care.

These modules describe oncology team practices that are “primary palliative care” compared to palliative medicine specialist care, when a palliative medicine specialist may be appropriate for a patient, the difference between palliative care and hospice care programs, when a referral to hospice i

These modules describe the common causes, assessment of, and ways to manage nausea/vomiting, constipation and dyspnea/shortness of breath.

This module distinguishes between an advance directive and POLST forms, identifies patients who are appropriate to start a POLST discussion and how to use the POLST form to create actionable medical orders to ensure seriously ill patient’s decisions about life-sustaining treatment are respected i

These modules define goals of care, adjusting conversations based on patient’s wishes and preferences, how and when to discuss hospice in a goals of care discussion, and describes the components of advance care planning based on stage of health.

This module addresses steps to prepare for a prognosis conversation, discusses barriers of this conversation with patients and families, and describes how to respond to patient’s emotions and their comprehension in an empathic way while eliciting what is most important to the patient.

This module dives deeper into pain management for cancer patients describing options for pain management including: opioids and adjuvant pain medication, discussion of opioid pharmacology and optimal opioid dosing, and conversion from one opioid to another.

This module describes different types of cancer pain, methods to thoroughly assess identification of pain type, and management of opioid side effects.

This information was originally presented at the NCCN 21^st Annual Conference: Advancing the Standard of Cancer Care™ held in Hollywood, Florida, from March 31 – April 2, 2016.