Palliative care services provide individual, patient centred and holistic care acting on domains including but not restricted to medical models of care. As such, they can be difficult to evaluate. Qualitative methods are often relied upon in these cases as they provide rich data that allows exploration of a topic from individual perspectives. More recently, Discrete Choice Experiment methods have emerged from health economics as a means of evaluating the value of services while maintaining that perspective. This study is a mixed methods study that will utilise a qualitative approach to define the framework for evaluating palliative day care services from both the patient and provider perspective. This framework will then be utilised in a Discrete Choice Experiment to determine the elements of the service that are valued by staff and patients.
