Journal of pain and symptom management
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jun 2016
Prescription and Deprescription of Medication During the Last 48 Hours of Life: Multicenter Study in 23 Acute Geriatric Wards in Flanders, Belgium.
Palliative care for the older person is often limited, resulting in poor quality of dying. Pharmacological management can be one of the components to achieve better symptom control. ⋯ Anticipatory prescription of medication and deprescription of medication at the end of life in acute geriatric wards could be further optimized. A well-developed intervention to guide health care staff in patient-centered pharmacological management in the last days of life seems to be needed.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jun 2016
Comparing Unmet Needs to Optimize Quality: Characterizing Inpatient and Outpatient Palliative Care Populations.
Palliative care (PC) consultation services are available in most hospitals; outpatient services are rapidly growing to meet the needs of patients at earlier stages of the disease trajectory. ⋯ Compared with inpatients, outpatients are more burdened by pain at first PC encounter yet experience higher quality of life and better performance status. These findings suggest different clinician skillsets, and assessments are needed depending on the setting of PC consultation.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jun 2016
Toward Safer Transitions: A Curriculum to Teach and Assess Hospital-to-Hospice Handoffs.
Patient handoffs are an increasingly emphasized skill in medical and nursing education, and handoff education is required by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Traditional handoff tools lack content that is unique to hospice and palliative medicine. ⋯ The hospital-to-hospice handoff is a unique opportunity to teach patient safety in a palliative medicine context.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jun 2016
The Multidimensional Orientation Toward Dying and Death Inventory (MODDI-F): Factorial Validity and Reliability in a U.S. Sample.
Death anxiety has been hypothesized to be a transdiagnostic construct, meaning that the fear of death may increase one's vulnerability to the development or maintenance of a number of psychological disorders. As such, effective and efficient measurement of this construct becomes a priority for hospice and palliative medicine specialists. The Multidimensional Orientation Toward Dying and Death Inventory (MODDI-F) is the only factor-analytically constructed multidimensional scale with a conceptual rationale that measures both the fear and acceptance of dying and death. ⋯ The results from this psychometric investigation of the English-language version of the MODDI-F are promising and warrant further investigation with clinical populations in hospice and palliative care settings.