Introduction: Standards of palliative care (PC) are developed to assure and improve quality of care. Difficulties arise in introducing them into daily practice. One of the most consistent finding in research of PC services is the gap between evidence based PC and practice. When standards require complex changes in clinical practice or better collaboration between disciplines or changes in the organization of care, their implementation is difficult.
Aim: To review existing evidence about introduction of standards and to identify the most effective and efficient approaches to achieve implementation of standards in practice.
Methods: Through previously collected and analyzed standards documents from different organizations, associations, nations etc., reports and articles on their implementation and effectiveness were explored.
Results: A variety of approaches have been introduced to provide solutions for better quality of patient PC, including assessment tools, accreditation regimens, audit, clinical guidelines, accountability, clinical pathways, shared documentation processes, total quality management, recognition of relative performance (ways of discussing errors), professional development, patient empowerment and permanent improvement of standards.
Conclusion: Given the complexity of improvement in the quality of patient care, it is not realistic to expect that one approach can solve all the problems of better quality of PC delivery. Findings and facts about the most effective ways and measures developed besides the standards will be presented and suggested for their better introduction into practice.