Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2020
Multicenter StudyAssociation between heart rate and reversibility of the symptom, refractoriness to palliative treatment, and survival in dyspneic cancer patients.
Dyspnea is one of the most distressing symptoms for terminally ill cancer patients and a predictor of poor prognosis. Identification of simple clinical signs, such as heart rate, indicating clinical course of each patient is of value. ⋯ Heart rate may help clinicians to make the prediction of the patient's clinical course more accurate.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2020
Rapid De-Escalation and Triaging Patients in Community-Based Palliative Care.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic created a rapid and unprecedented shift in our medical system. Medical providers, teams, and organizations have needed to shift their visits away from face-to-face visits and toward telehealth (both by phone and through video). Palliative care teams who practice in the community setting are faced with a difficult task: How do we actively triage the most urgent visits while keeping our vulnerable patients safe from the pandemic? ⋯ We recommend active triaging, communication, and frequent screening for COVID-19 symptoms for palliative care patients been evaluated in the community setting. An understanding of infection risk, mutual consent between designated providers, patients, and their families are crucial to maintaining safety while delivering community-based palliative care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2020
Cross-cultural Adaptation and Psychometric Validation of the French Version of the FAMCARE-Patient Questionnaire (FFP-16) for Outpatients with Advanced-stage Cancer.
Satisfaction is known to be correlated with the quality of care; it indicates the adequacy of the caregivers' responses in meeting the needs and expectations of patients. The FAMCARE-Patient questionnaire has been used to quantify satisfaction level in outpatients with advanced-stage cancers. ⋯ We found the FFP-16 questionnaire to be a reliable and valid instrument for the assessment of satisfaction in French outpatients with advanced-stage cancer.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2020
Rapid Implementation of Inpatient Telepalliative Medicine Consultations during COVID-19 Pandemic.
As coronavirus disease 2019 cases increase throughout the country and health care systems grapple with the need to decrease provider exposure and minimize personal protective equipment use while maintaining high-quality patient care, our specialty is called on to consider new methods of delivering inpatient palliative care (PC). Telepalliative medicine has been used to great effect in outpatient and home-based PC but has had fewer applications in the inpatient setting. As we plan for decreased provider availability because of quarantine and redeployment and seek to reach increasingly isolated hospitalized patients in the face of coronavirus disease 2019, the need for telepalliative medicine in the inpatient setting is now clear. We describe our rapid and ongoing implementation of telepalliative medicine consultation for our inpatient PC teams and discuss lessons learned and recommendations for programs considering similar care models.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Jul 2020
Which Melbourne metropolitan areas are vulnerable to COVID-19 based on age, disability and access to health services? Using spatial analysis to identify service gaps and inform delivery.
Aging adults (65+) with disability are especially vulnerable to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and on contracting, they are a cohort most likely to require palliative care. Therefore, it is very important that health services-particularly health services providing palliative care-are proximately available. Treating the Melbourne metropolitan area as a case study, a spatial analysis was conducted to clarify priority areas with a significantly high percentage and number of aging adults (65+) with disability and high barriers to accessing primary health services. ⋯ The geographic dispersion of areas with people vulnerable to COVID-19 with poor access to palliative care and health services is clarified. Unique methods of health service delivery are required to ensure that vulnerable populations in underserviced metropolitan areas receive prompt and adequate care. The spatial methodology used can be implemented in different contexts to support evidence-based COVID-19 and pandemic palliative care service decisions.