Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Feb 2017
Carers of people affected by cancer and other long-term conditions at end of life: A qualitative study of providing a bespoke package of support in a rural setting.
A UK charity, Macmillan Cancer Support has funded a local intervention, whereby carers of people affected by cancer and other long-term conditions at end of life are offered a bespoke package of support. ⋯ The intervention was successful within a social care setting. The participants had no overtly negative opinions on the service in its current format and all held it in high regard. Carers felt a sense of reassurance from having background support and maintained that their situation would have been worse had this support not been there.
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Palliative medicine · Feb 2017
Randomized Controlled TrialStandardized patient simulation versus didactic teaching alone for improving residents' communication skills when discussing goals of care and resuscitation: A randomized controlled trial.
Communication skills are important when discussing goals of care and resuscitation. Few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of standardized patients for teaching medical trainees to communicate about goals of care. ⋯ Simulation training may improve communication skill and comfort more than didactic training alone, but there were important confounders in this study and further studies are needed to determine whether simulation is better than didactic training for this purpose.
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Palliative medicine · Feb 2017
Measuring the quality of life of people at the end of life: The McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire-Revised.
The McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire has been widely used with people with life-threatening illnesses without modification since its publication in 1996. With use, areas for improvement have emerged; therefore, various minor modifications were tested over time. ⋯ The McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire-Revised improves on and can replace the McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire since it contains improved wording, a somewhat expanded repertoire of concepts with fewer items, and a single subscale for the physical domain, while retaining good psychometric properties.
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Palliative medicine · Feb 2017
Lay and professional stakeholder involvement in scoping palliative care issues: Methods used in seven European countries.
Stakeholders are people with an interest in a topic. Internationally, stakeholder involvement in palliative care research and health technology assessment requires development. Stakeholder involvement adds value throughout research (from prioritising topics to disseminating findings). Philosophies and understandings about the best ways to involve stakeholders in research differ internationally. Stakeholder involvement took place in seven countries (England, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Poland). Findings informed a project that developed concepts and methods for health technology assessment and applied these to evaluate models of palliative care service delivery. ⋯ Stakeholders, including patients and families undergoing palliative care, can inform project decision making using various involvement methods according to the local context. Researchers should consider local understandings about stakeholder involvement as views of appropriate and feasible methods vary. Methods for stakeholder involvement, especially consultation, need further development.