Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2022
Association of Sickle Cell Pain & Symptoms on Health-Related Quality of Life Among Pediatric Patients.
Sickle cell disease (SCD) may cause significant complications leading to increased disease burden and poor psychosocial functioning. Yet, little is known about specific disease-related variables associated with decreased health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of this population. ⋯ Pain and disease-related symptoms separately predicted lower HRQOL scores in the study sample, which shows that other SCD-related symptoms aside from pain has the potential to negatively impact youth with SCD. Implications for these findings extend the knowledge of clinicians in the healthcare setting to recognize the detriment of other SCD-related symptoms that may be overlooked, as pain is often the focus.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2022
Multidisciplinary Clinician Perspectives on Embedded Palliative Care Models in Pediatric Cancer.
Integration of palliative care (PC) into pediatric cancer care is considered best practice by national oncology and pediatric organizations. Optimal strategies for PC integration remain understudied, although growing evidence suggests that embedded models improve quality of care and quality of life for patients and families. ⋯ Pediatric clinicians recognize the potential value of an embedded PC model. Although some concepts overlapped, multidisciplinary clinicians offered unique beliefs, highlighting the importance of including representative perspectives to ensure that pediatric PC models align with priorities of diverse stakeholders.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2022
Survey of Pediatric Palliative Care Quality Improvement Training, Activities, and Barriers.
Children with serious illness deserve high-quality pediatric palliative care (PPC). With expansion of PPC provision, it is important to understand the quality improvement (QI) activities of PPC clinicians and programs. ⋯ Over half of PPC participants in this study reported involvement in QI activities despite limited staffing/time, QI training, and standardized measures, which presents challenges to this work.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2022
Multicenter StudyA Multi-Centre COVID-19 Study Examining Symptoms and Medication Use in the Final Week of Life.
Guidelines exist to direct end-of-life symptom management in COVID-19 patients. However, the real-world symptom patterns, and degree of concordance with guidelines on medication use, and palliative care involvement has received limited attention. ⋯ Symptoms peaked in final three days of life. Earlier use of in fusional and breakthrough medications should be considered in anticipation of symptoms given high likelihood of dying in discomfort. Earlier palliative care referral for high-risk patients should be considered at hospital admission.