Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2013
Randomized Controlled TrialFamily factors affect clinician attitudes in pediatric end-of-life decision making: a randomized vignette study.
Conflicts between families and clinicians in pediatric end-of-life (EOL) care cause distress for providers, dissatisfaction for patients' families, and potential suffering for terminally ill children. ⋯ In this randomized vignette study, we have shown that family factors, particularly how involved a family seems to be in a child's life, affect what clinicians think is ethically appropriate in challenging EOL cases. Knowledge of how a family's degree of involvement may affect clinicians should be helpful to the clinical ethics consultants and offer some degree of insight to the clinicians themselves.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2013
Facilitating needs-based support and palliative care for people with chronic heart failure: preliminary evidence for the acceptability, inter-rater reliability, and validity of a needs assessment tool.
Understanding the types and extent of need is critical to informing needs-based care for people with chronic heart failure (CHF). ⋯ This study provides preliminary evidence for the NAT: PD-HF as a potential strategy for identifying and informing the management of physical and psychosocial issues experienced by people with CHF. Further work is needed to examine additional psychometrics, benefits relating to unnecessary symptom burden, futile treatments, and admissions to hospital.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2013
Measuring relatives' perspectives on the quality of palliative care: the Consumer Quality Index Palliative Care.
A Consumer Quality Index (CQ-index) is a questionnaire assessing the actual care experiences and how important the recipient finds certain care aspects, as well as the priorities for improving quality. A CQ-index Palliative Care (CQ-index PC) for bereaved relatives was developed to measure the quality of palliative care. ⋯ The CQ-index PC for relatives can be used to assess the quality of palliative care from the perspective of bereaved relatives. This instrument gives health care professionals insight into care aspects with the highest priority for quality improvement.