Journal of pain and symptom management
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jan 2009
Preparing family caregivers for death and bereavement. Insights from caregivers of terminally ill patients.
Many family caregivers are unprepared for the death of their loved one and may suffer from worse mental health as a result. We therefore sought to determine the factors that family caregivers believe are important to preparing for death and bereavement. Focus groups and ethnographic interviews were conducted with 33 family caregivers (bereaved or current) of terminally ill patients. ⋯ Finally, preparedness had cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. To prepare, some caregivers needed information tailored to their uncertainty (cognitive), others needed to "mentally" or "emotionally" prepare (affective), and still others had important tasks to complete (behavioral). In order to better prepare family caregivers for the death of a loved one, health care providers must develop a trusting relationship with caregivers, provide them with reliable information tailored to their uncertainty, and allow time for caregivers to process the information and complete important tasks.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jan 2009
Coping strategies in the presence of one's own impending death from cancer.
An incurable cancer is a threat to life itself. This study focused on how native-born Swedes, who define themselves as nonreligious, actually reflect and act when they try to create helpful strategies in the presence of their own impending deaths and how the strategies serve their purposes. Twenty patients were interviewed in depth. ⋯ They strove to find factors that fitted their conceptual system and supported their inner balance and structure, all to keep death at a discreet distance and preserve their links to life. These links were togetherness, involvement, hope and continuance, and they served as a shield against hurtful feelings connected to their impending death. The new knowledge about how strategies in the presence of one's own impending death can develop and be used is perhaps the most novel and clinically relevant contribution of this study.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jan 2009
Comparative StudyLooking beyond where children die: determinants and effects of planning a child's location of death.
While dying at home may be the choice of many, where people die may be less important than argued. We examined factors associated with parental planning of a child's location of death (LOD) and its effects on patterns of care and parent's experience. In a cross-sectional study of 140 parents who lost a child to cancer at one of two tertiary-level U. ⋯ Among the 73 nonhome deaths, planning was associated with more deaths occurring in the ward than in the intensive care unit or other hospital (92% vs. 33%, P<0.001), and fewer children being intubated (21% vs. 48%, P=0.029). Comprehensive physician communication and home care involvement increase the likelihood of planning a child's LOD. Opportunity to plan LOD is associated with outcomes consistent with high-quality palliative care, even among nonhome deaths, and thus may represent a more relevant outcome than actual LOD.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jan 2009
Reliability and validity of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Palliative care (FACIT-Pal) scale.
The Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT) system provides a general, multidimensional measure of health-related quality of life (FACT-G) that can be augmented with disease or symptom-specific subscales. The 19-item palliative care subscale of the FACIT system has undergone little psychometric evaluation to date. The aim of this paper is to report the internal consistency, factor structure, and construct validity of the instrument using the palliative care subscale (FACIT-Pal). ⋯ The FACIT-Pal was able to discriminate between participants who died within three months of completing the baseline and participants who lived for at least one year after completing the baseline assessment (t=-4.05, P<0.001). The functional well-being subscale discriminated between participants who had a Karnofsky performance score of 70 and below and participants with a Karnofsky performance score of 80 and above (t=3.40, P<0.001). The findings support the internal consistency reliability and validity of the FACIT-Pal as a measure of health-related quality of life for persons with advanced cancer.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jan 2009
Has pain management in cancer patients with bone metastases improved? A seven-year review at an outpatient palliative radiotherapy clinic.
The primary objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of underdosage of analgesics for pain associated with bone metastases in outpatients referred to the Rapid Response Radiotherapy Program at the Odette Cancer Centre from 1999 to 2006. A prospective database containing data for all patients with bone metastases who were referred to the Rapid Response Radiotherapy Program for palliative radiotherapy from 1999 to 2006 was analyzed. The database included patient demographic information, including age at referral for radiation to the bone, gender, primary cancer site, and Karnofsky Performance Status; information on treatment-related factors, such as worst pain ratings and analgesic consumption in the past 24 hours (recorded as oral morphine equivalent doses); pain intensity ratings (none [rating=0], mild [rating=1-4], moderate [rating=5-6] or severe [rating=7-10]; and analgesic consumption (rated as none, nonopioids, weak opioids [e.g., codeine] and strong opioids [e.g., morphine and hydromorphone]). ⋯ The percentages of undermedicated patients were 40% in 1999, 34% in 2000, 29% in 2001, 37% in 2003, 39% in 2004, 36% in 2005, and 48% in 2006. No appreciable decline was noted in the proportion of patients with moderate-to-severe pain who received no pain medication, nonopioids, or weak opioids during the study period. Despite the publication of pain management guidelines and the dissemination of data regarding the proportion of patients with bone metastases who are being prescribed inadequate analgesics, our findings suggest that a significant proportion of patients continue to be undermedicated.