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Background  Early start of palliative care improves the quality of life of eligible patients and their relatives. However, in hospital, patients who could benefit from palliative care are often not identified timely. The aim of this study is to assess how hospital-based nurses and physicians define the palliative phase, how they identify the palliative phase and what difficulties they face.    Methods  Semi-structured interviews were held with ten nurses and 18 physicians working at seven hospitals in the Netherlands. Data was analysed using thematic analysis.    Results  Nurses and physicians feel insecure about how to define the palliative phase and differentiate between an acute and extended phase. Great variation existed in what life expectancy is attributed to each phase. A variety of ways to identify the palliative phase were described: 1) Prognostication. 2) Treatment trade-off. 3) Assessment of patients’ preferences and needs. 4) Interprofessional collaboration. Professionals base prognostication on their experience but also search for clinical indicators. When benefits of treatment no longer outweigh the negatives, this was considered an, albeit late, identification point. To start a conversation on a patients’ palliative care needs was found to be difficult. Therefore, some respondents wait for patients to vocalize preferences themselves. Many professionals rely on interprofessional collaboration for identification, however uncertainty exist about responsibilities. Difficulties in identification occurred because of variance in definitions, unpredictability of non-oncological diseases, focus on treatment and difficulties in communication and collaboration.    Conclusion  These results provide insight into the challenges and difficulties hospital-based professionals experience in timely identification of patients with palliative care needs.    Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (10.1186/s12904-019-0439-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

How do hospital-based nurses and physicians identify the palliative phase in their patients and what difficulties exist? A qualitative interview study