Hospice and End-of-life Symptom Monitoring & Support Using an Automated System Designed for Family Caregivers

Improving end-of-life care and the suffering caused by poorly controlled symptoms is an important public health concern. The development of an automated telephone symptom monitoring and support system that assists caregivers in providing end-of-life care and communicating information to the patient's hospice nurse has the potential to enhance the management of common end of life symptoms, thus reducing the suffering of patients at end of life as well as the suffering of their family caregivers. This study has developed such a system and is testing the effectiveness of this system.