Multiple sources: mapping the literature of palliative care

Palliative care is an increasingly important area of clinical practice and health service delivery. The heterogeneity of the patient population and the multidisciplinary nature of care draw on knowledge from many fields of clinical practice and academic enquiry. This has implications for the retrieval of evidence and literature and the spread of new knowledge in palliative care. This study shows that the CINAHL, Embase and PsycINFO bibliographic databases hold sizeable repositories of palliative care articles not indexed on Medline. It also highlights the number and range of journals publishing palliative care content. In 2005 alone, 1985 journals published 6983 items. These findings show the challenges for palliative care professionals in managing the complex evidence base for this diverse field of care and the importance of mechanisms that facilitate the identification of palliative care information. Dissemination strategies that ensure that new knowledge reaches the many audiences implicit in the range of journals publishing palliative care are also critical in supporting improvements in clinical practice and service delivery.