Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2020
ReviewInterventions to Support Family Caregivers in Pain Management: A Systematic Review.
Family caregivers encounter many challenges when managing pain for their loved ones. There is a lack of clear recommendations on how to prepare caregivers in pain management. ⋯ Providing adequate pain management training can improve patient and family caregiver outcomes. However, the most effective interventions for family caregivers are still unclear. More rigorous and replicable clinical trials are needed to examine the effects of educational interventions, cognitive-behavioral interventions, and technology-based interventions. Also, more studies are needed in patients with a noncancer diagnosis or multimorbidity.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2020
Feasibility and Acceptability of Inpatient Palliative Care E-Family Meetings During COVID-19 Pandemic.
Family meetings are fundamental to the practice of palliative medicine and serve as a cornerstone of intervention on the inpatient palliative care consultation service. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the structure and process of in-patient family meetings, owing to necessary but restrictive visitor policies that did not allow families to be present in the hospital. We describe implementation of telemedicine to facilitate electronic family (e-family) meetings to facilitate in-patient palliative care. ⋯ Of the 10 unique family participants who agreed to be interviewed, their overall ratings of the e-family meetings were high. Over 80% of respondent families participants reported that they agreed or strongly agreed that they were able to ask all of their questions, felt comfortable expressing their thoughts and feelings with the clinical team, felt like they understood the care their loved one received, and that the virtual family meeting helped them trust the clinical team. Of patients who were able to communicate, 50% of family respondents reported that the e-family meeting helped them understand their loved one's thoughts and wishes.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2020
Associations between the intention to use early palliative care, sources of information, and attitudes toward a good death in Korean adults.
Providing hospice and palliative care (HPC) early in the course of care for patients with life-threatening illness is important for improving patient quality of life. However, little literature exists for factors affecting to the intention to use early palliative care (EPC) of general population. ⋯ Information from health care providers and public awareness through education and publicity efforts are necessary to inform the public about the benefits of EPC. Furthermore, it is essential that medical staff cultivate the skills necessary to secure public trust and provide care that respects patients until the end of their lives.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2020
Using telehealth for hospice reauthorization visits: results of a quality improvement analysis.
Increasing hospice need, a growing shortage of hospice providers, and concerns about in-person services because of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) require hospices to innovate care delivery. ⋯ Results indicate that telehealth can successfully support clinical decision making for hospice reauthorization. These findings show telehealth to be reliable and acceptable for certain types of hospice care even before COVID-19, which emphasizes its importance both during and after the current public health emergency.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2020
Proactive Identification of Palliative Care Needs Among Patients with COVID-19 in the ICU.
In the setting of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, new strategies are needed to address the unique and significant palliative care (PC) needs of patients with COVID-19 and their families, particularly when health systems are stressed by patient surges. Many PC teams rely on referral-based consultation methods that can result in needs going unidentified and/or unmet. ⋯ In the first six weeks of operation, our pilot program of proactive screening and outreach resulted in PC consultation for 12 of the 29 (41%) adult patients admitted to the intensive care unit with COVID-19 at our institution. Consultations were most commonly for patient and family support as well as for goals of care and advance care planning, consistent with identified PC needs within this unique patient population.