Patient education and counseling
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Appropriate palliative care communication is pivotal to optimizing the quality of life in dying patients and their families. This review aims at describing communication patterns in palliative care and discussing potential relations between communication patterns and upcoming telecare in the practice of palliative care. ⋯ Our study supports understanding of current communication in palliative care and anticipates future communicative actions in an era of new communication technologies.
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Chronic illness places high demands on patients. Interventions supporting self-management and providing personalized feedback might help patients to gain new perspectives and enhance use of constructive self-management strategies. We developed three comparable web-based CBT-grounded interventions including e-diaries and feedback delivered through PDAs/smartphones. The feasibility and efficacy of these interventions have been investigated for patients with irritable bowel syndrome (in an RCT), chronic widespread pain (RCT) and type 2 diabetes (feasibility study). ⋯ The results of the three studies suggest that personalized web-based interventions are effective and have the potential to support self-management in daily healthcare. Studies concerning clinical significance and implementation are needed.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Delivery of telephone-based supportive care to people with cancer: An analysis of cancer helpline operator and cancer nurse communication.
Telephone-based supportive care presents a potentially highly accessible means of addressing unmet supportive care needs for people with cancer. Identification of behaviours that facilitate communication is essential for development of training for telephone-based supportive care. The aim of this study was to describe communication behaviours within supportive care telephone calls in two contexts (1) a telephone outreach intervention and (2) cancer helpline calls, to identify potential areas for further training. ⋯ Communication skills training that addresses each of these tasks is likely to improve the effectiveness of telephone-based delivery of supportive care.
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Communication performance inconsistency between consultations is usually regarded as a measurement error that jeopardizes the reliability of assessments. However, inconsistency is an important phenomenon, since it indicates that physicians' communication may be below standard in some consultations. ⋯ In order to improve performance quality and reduce performance inconsistency, communication education should offer ample opportunities to practice a wide variety of challenging consultations.