Establishing a common definition for care provided by hospice societies in British Columbia, Canada: a Delphi process
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Currently, there are over 70 hospice societies spread across urban, rural, and remote communities in BC. However, these societies are not utilized to their fullest potential, primarily due to a lack of awareness of the unique role they play in their communities and common misconceptions about the types of care they provide. Objectives: To develop a consensus-based definition of the care provided by hospice societies in BC, suitable for use across government, healthcare, community organizations, and the public. Design: A modified Delphi approach, guided by an environmental scan, was used to reach consensus on a standard definition of care among a panel of experts. Methods: Following an environmental scan of gray and published literature for attributes and components of care delivered by hospice societies, the expert panel participated in a modified Delphi process of iterative surveys asking questions about content, wording, and structure of the definition. The 56-member panel consisted of hospice society experts, palliative care experts, and people with lived experience. Consensus was defined as 75% agreement across the entire panel (all) and 75% agreement across hospice society representatives (hospice). Results: After six survey rounds, consensus was met on a common definition with three different length versions: full- and medium-length versions (85% all, 85% hospice) and a short version (94% all, 100% hospice). Differing opinions within our expert panel about components of care supported the need for this common definition. Conclusion: Our consensus-based definition provides unprecedented clarity and a shared understanding about the care provided by hospice societies in BC. Hospice societies are expected to benefit from this clarity by maximizing their use and access. It is also expected that this definition will guide advocacy efforts, ultimately contributing to the quality and sustainability of hospice care across the province.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.143 | 0.092 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.015 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".