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Documentation of older people’s end-of-life care should cover the care given and provide an overview of their entire situation. Older people approaching the end of life often have complex symptoms, live with bodily losses, and face an unknown future in which existential aspects come to the forefront. Knowledge of the existential aspects recorded in palliative care documentation is sparse and merits improvement. This knowledge is relevant to the development of more holistic documentation and is necessary in order to promote reflection on and discussion of documentation of the sensitive existential considerations arising in palliative care. The aim of this study was to describe the documentation of existential aspects in the patient records of older people receiving specialized palliative care.

Data were obtained from a retrospective review of the free-text notes in 84 records of randomly selected …