Journal of pain and symptom management
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2017
Distinguishing between spiritual distress, general distress, spiritual well-being, and spiritual pain among cancer patients during oncology treatment.
Spiritual distress is present in approximately 25% of oncology patients. ⋯ The DT is not sufficient to identify spiritual distress. The peace subscale of FACIT-Sp-12 is a better match than the measure as a whole. The SIS is the best match for spiritual distress, although an imperfect one.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2017
Multicenter StudySpecialty Palliative Care Consultations for Nursing Home Residents with Dementia.
U.S. nursing home (NH) residents with dementia have limited access to specialty palliative care beyond Medicare hospice. ⋯ Consultations appear to reduce acute care use and (potentially) burdensome transitions for dying residents with dementia. Reductions were greater when consultations were earlier.
-
Accurate estimation of life expectancy in patients with brain metastases is critical for counseling and choosing appropriate therapy. Performance status is the single greatest determinant of overall survival in this population. However, current measures of performance status are subjective and often based on brief clinical encounters. Gait speed is an objective, reliable predictor of overall health and survival. ⋯ Gait speed is associated with overall survival in patients with newly diagnosed brain metastases. Gait speed assessment is simple, objective, and may provide additional prognostic information to improve life expectancy estimation and management decisions.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2017
Validation of the Persian version of the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI-P) in chronic pain patients.
Chronic pain needs to be evaluated with a standard instrument. The Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) is a pain assessment tool that has been validated in many languages. ⋯ The present study demonstrated that the Persian version of the BPI could be a valid and reliable instrument for pain assessment in Persian-speaking patients.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2017
Pragmatic Clinical TrialFinancial Incentives to Increase Advance Care Planning Among Medicaid Beneficiaries: Lessons Learned from Two Pragmatic Randomized Trials.
Medicaid populations have low rates of advance care planning (ACP). Potential policy interventions include financial incentives. ⋯ ACP rates were low despite an existing provider financial incentive. Adding a provider-delivered patient financial incentive, but not a mail-delivered patient incentive, modestly increased ACP discussions. PCP encouragement combined with a patient incentive may be more powerful than either encouragement or incentive alone.