Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Feb 2021
Patient-reported Cognitive and Functional Impairments Among Older Canadians With Cancer; A Population-Based Study.
Cancer is estimated to affect one out of two Canadians throughout their lifetime and to be the cause of death of one out of four Canadians. Although it can affect virtually patients of any age, it disproportionately affects older adults. ⋯ Older adults with an active cancer diagnosis are more likely to report impaired cognitive and functional status compared with older adults without an active cancer diagnosis. More efforts are needed to ensure the integration of validated geriatric assessment tools (incorporating patient-reported elements) in the care of older adults with cancer.
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PC-FACS (FastArticleCriticalSummaries for Clinicians inPalliativeCare) provides hospice and palliative care clinicians with concise summaries of the most important findings from more than 100 medical and scientific journals. If you have colleagues who would benefit from receiving PC-FACS, please encourage them to join the AAHPM at aahpm.org. Comments from readers are welcomed at pcfacs@aahpm.org.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Jan 2021
Identifying Goals of Care Conversations in the Electronic Health Record, Using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning.
Goals-of-care discussions are an important quality metric in palliative care. However, goals-of-care discussions are often documented as free text in diverse locations. It is difficult to identify these discussions in the electronic health record (EHR) efficiently. ⋯ Using NLP and ML techniques, we developed a novel approach to identifying goals-of-care discussions in the EHR. NLP and ML represent a potential approach toward measuring goals-of-care discussions as a research outcome and quality metric.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Jan 2021
Psychological Adaptation to Serious Illness: A Qualitative Study of Culturally Diverse Patients with Advanced Chronic Kidney Disease.
Psychological distress is associated with adverse health outcomes in serious illness and magnified among patients of low socioeconomic status. Aspects of one's culture, such as religion and spirituality, can influence these patients' coping response to distress. Advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a serious illness that disproportionately affects patients of low socioeconomic status, but a theory-based understanding of this group's lived experience of CKD is lacking. ⋯ Individuals with advanced CKD and low socioeconomic status lack control over disease progression, experience death anxiety and existential distress, and emphasize spirituality to cope. Our study identifies novel components for a psychotherapeutic intervention for patients with advanced CKD at high risk for adverse health outcomes.