Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Aug 2016
Is it the Difference a Day Makes? Bereaved Caregivers' Perceptions of Short Hospice Enrollment.
Hospice enrollment for less than one month has been considered too late by some caregivers and at the right time for others. Perceptions of the appropriate time for hospice enrollment in cancer are not well understood. ⋯ The findings suggest that one more day of hospice care may increase perceived comfort, symptom management, and decreased suffering and signal the need for rapid response protocols.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Aug 2016
Prevalence of Sudden Death in Palliative Care: Data from the Australian Palliative Care Outcomes Collaborative (PCOC).
Advanced, life-limiting illnesses are likely to have a predictable functional decline through a terminal phase to death, but some patients may also die suddenly. To date, empirical evidence characterizing "sudden death" in hospice/palliative care is lacking. ⋯ This study quantifies rates of sudden death in hospice/palliative care and has implications for conversations about prognosis between clinicians, patients, and their families.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Aug 2016
Building Resilience for Palliative Care Clinicians: An Approach to Burnout Prevention Based on Individual Skills and Workplace Factors.
For palliative care (PC) clinicians, the work of caring for patients with serious illness can put their own well-being at risk. What they often do not learn in training, because of the relative paucity of evidence-based programs, are practical ways to mitigate this risk. Because a new study indicates that burnout in PC clinicians is increasing, we sought to design an acceptable, scalable, and testable intervention tailored to the needs of PC clinicians. ⋯ The intervention will focus on individual skill building and will be evaluated with measures of resilience, coping, and affect. For PC clinicians, resilience skills are likely as important as communication skills and symptom management as foundations of expertise. Future work to strengthen clinician resilience will likely need to address system issues more directly.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Aug 2016
Association of Descriptors of Breathlessness with Diagnosis and Self-Reported Severity of Breathlessness in Patients with Advanced Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or Cancer.
Verbal descriptors are important in understanding patients' experience of breathlessness. ⋯ The relationship between clusters and diagnosis is not robust enough to use the descriptors to identify the primary cause of breathlessness. Further work exploring how use of breathlessness descriptors reflects the severity of breathlessness and distress due to breathlessness could enable the descriptors to evaluate patient status and target interventions.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Aug 2016
Differences in Terminal Hospitalization Care Between U.S. Men and Women.
In many settings, men and women receive different care. ⋯ Men who die in hospitals receive more aggressive care than women. Further research should examine potential causes of this overall pattern.