on the use of sedative medication in specialist palliative care

Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF); grant reference: 01GY2020A-C

Project duration: 1 May 2021 – 31 October 2024

The use of sedative medicines in specialised palliative care is a common but also challenging practice. Following the successful completion of the SedPall collaborative project – which, amongst other things, produced a set of recommendations for action on the ‘use of sedative medicines in specialised palliative care’ – the project team worked on the follow-up project, iSedPall.

The aim of the iSedPall project was to make the recommendations for the use of sedative drugs in specialíst palliative care.To this end, a multimodal intervention was developed and a feasibility study was carried out. The defined sub-objectives were:

1. the development of a multimodal intervention to support the use of sedative medication in specialised palliative care
2. to pilot the multimodal intervention (assessing feasibility, acceptance and user-friendliness); and
3. to systematically integrate ethical, participatory, legal and societal aspects into the development and piloting phases.

The support tools and corresponding training/teaching materials, which together form the multimodal intervention, were developed and piloted by the interdisciplinary research consortium with the involvement of patients and the public (participatory approach). The result is a set of practical templates and decision-making aids for the use of sedative medicines that can be applied in everyday practice.

The sub-project (SP2), led by Prof. Dr Schildmann, focused on the development and piloting of medication-related decision-making aids as part of the multimodal intervention.

Project team:

(Project based at Prof. Dr Schildmann’s previous place of work, LMU Munich Medical Centre)

Project leaders: Prof. Dr Claudia Bausewein (LMU Munich Hospital) and Prof. Dr Eva Schildmann

Project partners in the iSedPall project:

• Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU)/Chair of Palliative Medicine (consortium coordinator)
• Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU)/Chair of Medical Criminal Law
• Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich/Chair of Palliative Medicine
• Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg/Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine

iSedPall Toolbox: all materials are available on the DGP website: Overview