Palliative care Outcome Scale (POS)

The Palliative care Outcome Scale (POS) is a resource for palliative care practice, teaching and research. This website has been established by a not-for-profit organisation to help advance measurement in palliative care. Free resources and training are available.

POS is a tool to measure patients' physical symptoms, psychological, emotional and spiritual needs, and provision of information and support at the end of life.

It is a validated instrument that can be used in clinical care, audit, research and training. It is widely used internationally, including in Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and America.

POS can be downloaded from this website and is available in 11 languages including English.

POS-S is an additional module for symptoms which can be used alongside POS to capture more information about symptoms for a range of conditions such as cancer, heart failure and respiratory conditions. Extended versions have also been developed for use with patients living with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and end-stage renal disease.

Resources

Research shows access to free tools is important in palliative care. You will have free access to POS, POS-S resources and be kept up to date with POS developments and opportunities after you register.

Get involved

to get involved and join our global community of POS users.

News and Events

Report shows that POS impacts on quality of hospice care in Africa and reaches patients and families in Sub-Saharan Africa. (will open in a new window)

Another video on using POS in clinical settings is available on our YouTube channel (will open in a new window)

In Namibia, Catholic AIDS Action (CAA) worked with APCA to use POS for setting quality improvement priorities in patient care. It was also used to evaluate the impact on patient and carer outcomes of training and integrating palliative care into home based care. Palliative care has now been integrated into 96 service sites.

APCA POS used in a phase III RCT; read the protocol here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/12/288 (will open in a new window)

Another short introduction video on POS is available on our YouTube channel (will open in a new window)

The final updated programmes for the POS training days are now available on the Courses and workshops page.

A short "Introducing POS" video is available on the POS Video page.

A new study Impact of the APCA African Palliative Outcome Scale (POS) on care and practice by Olivia Dix is now available.

POS training from 18-19 February 2013 is now over.

Initial validation of a Brazil version of POS is now close to completion.

The POS team is working towards completing the first e-learning module which will be available on this website.

The POS team will be developing POS learning resources on 12 November 2012.

Meet the POS Team at “In the end, care counts: End of life care conference 2012”, the 16/10/2012 in Westminster, London, SW1P 3NZ. We will have a stand with the Cicely Saunders Institute.

POS to be used in a cross-national study involving US, Ireland and UK from November 2012.

POS and POS-S are being combined to form a new version called Integrated POS or IPOS.

POS featuring in Floriani Foundation website.

Welcome to Lesley Henson who has joined the POS team and is also working on the BuildCARE project at the Cicely Saunders Insitute.

POS featuring in "best practice BMJ" under comprehensive palliative care assessment.

Website has been “refreshed” hope you like it! More to come. Any ideas on how to improve the website or comments? please contact Peter.

Welcome to Yuen King Ho, Mendy Dzingina, Caty Pannel and Danielle Harker who have joined the POS team and are also working on various projects at the Cicely Saunders Institute.

Thanks BMJ Journals, for republishing our paper on "POS and STAS which questions are most useful? " in Postgrad Med J.

New manual available for download POS Manual for cross cultural adaptation and validation (opens in new window).

Welcome to Clare Ellis-Smith who has joined the POS team and is also working on the BuildCARE project.

POS team at the 7th EAPC congress 7-9 June 2012 in Norway.

More than 1250 registered users on POS website since it was launched in May 2011.

POS website highly reviewed (link in Italian).

Meet the POS team at the 9th Palliative Care Congress 14- 16 March 2012 in Gateshead, UK.

National developments in Wales means that I-POS is used routinely throughout the nation.

Brazilian POS validated version coming soon / A versão do POS em Português (Brasileiro) será disponibilizada em breve neste site.

Bulgarian POS validated version coming soon / Българският превод на POS - Измерване на резултатите от провежданите палиативни грижи - се подготвя и ще бъде на ваше разположение скоро.

Guidelines on cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the POS coming soon.

POS and STAS which questions are most useful? Higginson et al 2012.

Outcomes out of Africa Downing et al 2012.

Implementing PROM's in palliative care Bausewein et al 2011.

POS training 2011 was a success! Thank you to all participants and speakers.

The programmes for the November 2011 training days are available on the courses and workshops page or using the following links. POS clinicians’ training day 14/11/2011 and POS researchers’ training day 15/11/2011 (open in new windows).

EAPC Taskforce on patient-reported outcome measurement in palliative care launched May 2011.

PRISMA-MoreCARE joint summit on outcome measurement - May 2011.

POS website launch at the 12th EAPC congress May 2011.

New POS systematic review published Bausewein et al 2011.