Journal of pain and symptom management
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2019
Interprofessional Team Member Communication Patterns, Teamwork, and Collaboration in Pre-family Meeting Huddles in a Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.
Interprofessional teams often develop a care plan before engaging in a family meeting in the pediatric cardiac intensive care unit (CICU)-a process that can affect the course of the family meeting and alter team dynamics but that has not been studied. ⋯ Interprofessional team members' interactions in team meetings provide important information about team dynamics, revealing potential opportunities for improved collaboration and communication in team meetings and subsequent family meetings.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2019
Observational StudyClinical Patterns of Continuous and Intermittent Palliative Sedation in Terminal Cancer Patients: A Descriptive, Observational Study.
Limited information is available regarding the detailed clinical patterns of palliative sedation (PS), that is, the symptom control rate, salvage medication, and the effectiveness of intermittent PS (IPS) versus continuous PS (CPS). ⋯ The refractory symptoms of end-of-life patients with cancer can ultimately be relieved with various medications for PS. IPS may improve the consciousness level of patients with delirium.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2019
Giving Voice to Patient Values Throughout Cancer: A Novel Nurse-Led Intervention.
Optimal advance care planning allows patients to articulate their values as a touchstone for medical decision making. Ideally, this occurs when patients are clinically stable, and with opportunities for iteration as the clinical situation unfolds. ⋯ Nurse-led discussions of patient values soon after diagnosis are feasible and acceptable in busy oncology clinics. Further research will evaluate the impact of this novel approach on additional patient-oriented outcomes after broader dissemination of this initiative throughout our institution.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2019
ReviewSymptom Clusters in People Living With HIV: A Systematic Review.
An increasing number of studies regarding symptom management have begun to shift their focus from managing a single symptom to multiple symptom clusters. However, there is a lack of consistency of compositions among different studies and even in two different analyses reported in a single study within the same population. ⋯ This systematic review summarized the compositions, measures, and analytical techniques of symptom clusters for PLWH. Although this review found unstable results on the compositions of symptom clusters and it was difficult to reach a definitive conclusion, the results still implicate the necessity of developing a threshold to decide what symptoms should be included in the clusters and the use of multiple data analysis techniques to obtain stable results.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2019
Prevalence, Severity and Correlates of Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression at the Very End of Life.
Rates of psychological symptoms for patients with serious illness are high, but there has been limited research investigating psychological symptoms at the very end of life (EOL). ⋯ Psychological symptom management at the very EOL is essential to providing comprehensive hospice care. Our study revealed that nearly half of all home hospice patients experience moderate-to-severe symptoms of anxiety and/or depression in the last week of life. Future research is needed to improve psychological symptom management at the very EOL to improve the quality of life for both patients and their families.