Background: Palliative care is an essential element of the healthcare system. It has profound benefits for patients with life-limiting illnesses. The Saudi Arabian healthcare system lags in integrating this vital component effectively. Hence, estimating the palliative care needs of the Saudi Arabian population is crucial to understanding the country’s demand for palliative care. Aim: To assess the past trends in adult palliative care needs in Saudi Arabia. Methods: The current research used population-based secondary data analysis by employing two palliative care needs estimation methods: the direct or fixed estimation method by Gómez-Batiste and the maximum or maximal method by Murtagh and Rosenwax. The estimated palliative care needs were stratified by gender. Results: An upward trend in the palliative care needs of the Saudi Arabian population is evident through the estimation techniques. The proportion of palliative care needs relative to deaths climaxed at 95% in the observed years. By 2022, the number of people requiring palliative care skyrocketed to 79,725 (fixed method) and 101,623 (maximal method). Conclusion: The need for palliative care in Saudi Arabia substantially rose in the observed years. It is inevitable to bridge the gap between palliative care needs and supply with advanced integration of palliative care services in the national healthcare system.

Background: Improvement in quality care is an important aspect of palliative care for individuals with serious illnesses. Palliative care is a multidisciplinary strategy that addresses the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of patients and their families. As technology advances, digital media – especially YouTube – has come to serve as a virtual educational platform, offering resources for health-related information, including information about palliative care. Objectives: In this research, the main goal was to evaluate the quality and availability of online resources related to palliative care. Design: Two theoretical frameworks were used: the Health Communication Model and the Information Quality Framework. These frameworks offer a way to understand how YouTube videos contribute to palliative care information and assess the quality of that information. Methods: This study utilizes a quantitative analysis approach to assess the quality and accessibility of YouTube videos on palliative care. Specifically, a random sample of 300 YouTube videos addressing palliative care was examined. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data, including the frequency and distribution of the different types of content, sources, and quality indicators. Chi-square tests were done to compare the quality of information provided by different sources and types of content. Results: The results showed a variety of video types, with educational videos being the most common (40%), followed by personal stories (26.7%) and promotional videos (16.7%). We found that healthcare organizations (30%) and individual content creators (46.7%) were the sources for these videos. Conclusion: There were varying scores in terms of accuracy, completeness, and relevance when it came to quality assessment. While many videos received excellent ratings, some received poor ratings. Additionally, this analysis revealed that the majority of these videos were in English (83.3%), which poses a limitation for non-English speakers who may have difficulty understanding them.

Background/Objectives: Hospice care is intended to improve comfort, symptom management, communication, and person-centered care. National evidence using consistent last month of life measures across multiple survey rounds remains limited. This study examined the association between hospice use and proxy-reported quality of care during the last month of life among older Medicare beneficiaries. Methods: A pooled repeated cross-sectional analysis was conducted using 4666 completed Last Month of Life interviews from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), Rounds 3–14 (survey years 2013–2024). Hospice use was identified using a composite of five service- and setting-based indicators to account for questionnaire routing. The primary outcome was an overall care rating of excellent or very good. Secondary outcomes assessed personal care, respect, communication, decision-making, symptom assistance, and adequacy of assistance. Analyses used round- and cohort-appropriate analytic weights, 56 Fay-balanced repeated replication weights, equal-round normalization, and survey-weighted logistic regression. Results: Hospice status was classifiable for 4583 respondents, of whom 2658 received hospice care. Weighted hospice prevalence was 57.5% (95% CI, 55.6–59.5%). Among the 4445 respondents with a valid overall care rating, excellent or very good care was reported for 81.9% of hospice recipients and 74.7% of nonrecipients. In the demographic-adjusted model, hospice use was associated with higher odds of an excellent or very good care rating (OR, 1.48; 95% CI, 1.20–1.83); the estimate was 1.83 (95% CI, 1.46–2.31) after an additional adjustment for contemporaneous severity-related measures. Standardized probabilities were 82.6% with hospice and 73.1% without hospice care, an adjusted difference of 9.5 percentage points (95% CI, 5.7–13.3). Hospice care was also associated with greater receipt and adequacy of assistance for pain, breathing difficulties, and anxiety or sadness. Conclusions: Hospice use was associated with better proxy-reported overall care and more complete symptom assistance during the last month of life. These findings are consistent with a potential contribution of interdisciplinary hospice care, including symptom assessment, caregiver education, and communication. Residual confounding, selective hospice enrollment, and retrospective proxy reporting preclude causal interpretation.