Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2012
Quality improvement in cancer symptom assessment and control: the Provincial Palliative Care Integration Project (PPCIP).
The Provincial Palliative Care Integration Project (PPCIP) was implemented in Ontario, Canada, to enhance the quality of palliative care delivery. The PPCIP promoted collaboration and integration across service sectors to improve screening and assessment, palliative care processes, as well as clinician practice and outcomes for cancer patients. ⋯ The PPCIP demonstrated that significant strides in symptom screening and response can be achieved within a year using rapid-cycle change and collaborative approaches. It showed that both short- and long-term improvement require ongoing facilitation to embed the changes in system design and change the culture of clinical practice.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2012
Talking about end-of-life preferences with advanced cancer patients: factors influencing feasibility.
The End-of-Life Preferences Interview (ELPI) was developed with the purpose of supporting physicians in communicating with advanced cancer patients. ⋯ Results indicate that discussing end-of-life preferences in an earlier disease phase, such as in the OU setting, could be preferable but that its accomplishment in this setting may be more difficult, mainly as a result of organizational reasons. This observation could indicate that the system is not yet ready to offer patients such an opportunity and although communication on these sensitive issues cannot be reduced to a procedure, the ELPI can become a useful tool to help physicians in accomplishing this difficult task.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2012
The Catalonia World Health Organization demonstration project for palliative care implementation: quantitative and qualitative results at 20 years.
Catalonia (Spain) has a total population of 7.3 million citizens for whom the National Health Service (NHS) provides health care that is free at the point of access. The prevalence of terminally ill patients is between 30,100 and 39,600. Twenty years ago, the World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with the Catalan Department of Health and the Catalan Institute of Oncology, began a demonstration project (WHO Demonstration Project) in palliative care (PC) with the aim of implementing specialist PC services, generating experience in this field, identifying areas for improvement, and introducing educative procedures (clinical and nonclinical). ⋯ The overall yearly costs are around €52,568,000, with an overall savings of €69,300,000 (€2275 per patient, net savings to the NHS of €16,732,000). In the last five years, three qualitative evaluations and a benchmarking process have been performed to identify weak points and inequities in care provision among districts. Systematic assessments indicate high cost-effectiveness of care as well as high levels of satisfaction by patients and their relatives, thus reinforcing the principle that access to PC under the auspices of the NHS at the end of life is a basic human right.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2012
Self-compassion in patients with persistent musculoskeletal pain: relationship of self-compassion to adjustment to persistent pain.
Self-compassion entails qualities such as kindness and understanding toward oneself in difficult circumstances and may influence adjustment to persistent pain. Self-compassion may be a particularly influential factor in pain adjustment for obese individuals who suffer from persistent pain, as they often experience heightened levels of pain and lower levels of psychological functioning. ⋯ The results of this study indicate that self-compassion may be important in explaining the variability in pain adjustment among patients who have persistent musculoskeletal pain and are obese.
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PC-FACS (Fast Article Critical Summaries for Clinicians in Palliative Care), an electronic publication of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, provides palliative care clinicians with concise summaries of the most important findings from more than 50 medical and scientific journals. Each month, structured summaries and insightful commentaries on 6-10 articles help palliative care clinicians stay on top of the research that is critical to contemporary practice. PC-FACS is free to AAHPM members. Following are excerpts from recent issues, and comments from readers are welcomed at resources@aahpm.org.