Objective To investigate the current situation of hospice care demand in elderly patients with advanced lung cancer, analyze the correlation between sense of life meaning, quality of social relationships and hospice care demand, and explore the main influencing factors of hospice care demand.

Methods By using the convenient sampling method, 136 elderly patients with advanced lung cancer were selected as the survey subjects. The questionnaire survey was conducted using the Visual Analogue Scale for Pain (VAS), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Parsons Insomnia Scale (AIS), Sense of Meaning in Life Scale for Cancer Patients (C-MiLS), Social Relationship Quality Scale (SRQS) and Palliative Care Needs Scale (NiHCS).

Results The total NiHCS score of 136 advanced elderly patients with lung cancer was (97.71 ± 18.26), which was at the moderate level of demand. The differences of the NiHCS scores among patients with different ages, education, family monthly income, respiratory symptoms, cancer pain, HADS-A, HADS-D and sleep quality were statistically significant (P ＜ 0.05). The scores of C-MiLS and SRQS were positively correlated with total score of NiHCS (r = 0.259–0.615, P ＜ 0.05). The education, cancer pain, respiratory symptoms, HADS-A, C-MiLS and SRQS were the main influencing factors of hospice care demand in elderly patients with advanced lung cancer (P ＜ 0.05), which could explain 73.90% of patients' hospice needs.

Conclusions The hospice care needs of advanced elderly patients with lung cancer are mainly moderate, and there is a correlation between the sense of life meaning, quality of social relations and hospice care needs. Medical staff should implement targeted hospice passport care according to the characteristics of patients, improve the sense of life meaning and quality of social relations, so as to meet the needs of patients for hospice care and improve the quality of life.