EU PAL COPD : Evaluation of the ICLEAR-EU intervention to integrate palliative care in the treatment of people with advanced COPD and their family caregivers: An international stepped wedge cluster RCT in six European countries.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a devastating life-limiting lung disease with a high personal and societal burden.
Worldwide, COPD is the third leading cause of death. The symptom burden of people with COPD is as severe and burdensome as
the symptom burden of people with lung COPD. While palliative care in many countries is available for people with lung COPD,
palliative care and good end-of-life care for people with COPD are not well integrated into their treatment by respiratory hospital teams in
Europe. The EU PAL-COPD project is a multidisciplinary, interprofessional, international and intersectoral project aiming at evaluating
the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the ICLEAR-EU intervention for people with advanced COPD in different healthcare systems in
Europe. ICLEAR-EU is a person-centred and family-centred non-pharmacological service intervention in which respiratory teams in the
hospital collaborate with interdisciplinary palliative care teams and with primary care to promote shared decision-making and advance
care planning, improve symptom treatment and comfort care, and prevent re-hospitalization after an exacerbation.