Journal of pain and symptom management
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Feb 2023
ReviewDelivering Palliative Care to Hospitalized Oncology Patients: A Scoping Review.
Early, longitudinal integration of palliative care (PC) is recommended for patients with advanced cancer, in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Despite the growth of specialty PC teams in the last decade, the majority of PC is still delivered in the inpatient setting using a traditional referral-based consult delivery model. However, traditional consultation can lead to significant variation or delay in inpatient PC utilization. New care delivery models and strategies are emerging to deliver PC to hospitalized oncology patients who would most benefit from their services and to better align with professional society recommendations. ⋯ Our findings provide guidance to health systems about care delivery models to deploy and implement inpatient PC resources to best serve their unique populations.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Feb 2023
ReviewA Systematic Review of Stakeholder Perspectives of Dignity and Assisted Dying.
The debate on assisted dying and its components, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide has evolved with the emergence of the right to dignity and the wish to hasten death (WTHD). Whilst shaped by local legal and sociocultural considerations, appreciation of how patients, healthcare professionals and lawmakers relate notions of dignity to self-concepts of personhood and the desire for assisted dying will better inform and direct support of patients. ⋯ Concepts of dignity constantly evolve throughout the patient's end of life journey. Understanding when and how these concepts of personhood change and trigger the fear of a loss of dignity or intractable suffering could direct timely, individualised and appropriate person-centred dignity conserving measures. We believe an RToP-based tool could fulfil this role and further study into the design of this tool is planned.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Feb 2023
ReviewDesign Considerations for Embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trials of Advance Care Planning Interventions for Persons Living With Dementia.
Advance care planning (ACP) is an important part of comprehensive care for persons living with dementia (PLWD). While many trials have established the efficacy of ACP in improving end-of-life communication and documentation of care preferences, there remains a gap in clinical usage. Embedded pragmatic clinical trials (ePCTs) may facilitate the uptake of evidence-based care into existing healthcare by deploying efficacious ACP interventions into real-world settings. ⋯ These considerations are weighed in further detail by describing the approaches from three published trials. Specifically, we consider how potential challenges were overcome by tradeoffs in study design. Finally, we offer directions for future growth to advance ePCTs for ACP among PLWD and catalyze future research.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Feb 2023
Trends in Obesity Prevalence among US Older Adults in the Last Two Years of Life, 1998-2018.
The prevalence of obesity has grown in the US over the decades. The temporal trends of body mass index categories in the last two years of life are poorly understood. ⋯ Severe obesity has increased greatly while underweight has decreased. As obesity increases in the final years of life, it is critical to assess how the existing and future palliative services and end of life care system address body size and weight.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Feb 2023
Patient-reported Quality Measures for Palliative Care: The time is now.
While progress has been made in the ability to measure the quality of hospice and specialty palliative care, there are notable gaps. A recent analysis conducted by Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) revealed a paucity of patient-reported measures, particularly in palliative care domains such as symptom management and communication. ⋯ These measures highlight the key role of patient voices in palliative care and fill a much-needed gap for patient-reported experience measures in our field.