Palliative medicine
-
Palliative medicine · Jun 2017
ReviewAssessment of the wish to hasten death in patients with advanced disease: A systematic review of measurement instruments.
Patients with advanced conditions may present a wish to hasten death. Assessing this wish is complex due to the nature of the phenomenon and the difficulty of conceptualising it. ⋯ This systematic review has analysed existing instruments for assessing the wish to hasten death. It has also explored the methodological quality of studies that have examined the measurement properties of these instruments and offers ratings of the reported properties. These results will be useful to clinicians and researchers with an interest in a phenomenon of considerable relevance to advanced patients.
-
Palliative medicine · Jun 2017
Estimating the need for palliative care at the population level: A cross-national study in 12 countries.
To implement the appropriate services and develop adequate interventions, detailed estimates of the needs for palliative care in the population are needed. ⋯ These estimations of the size of the population potentially in need of palliative care provide robust indications of the challenge countries are facing if they want to seriously address palliative care needs at the population level.
-
Palliative medicine · Jun 2017
Review'Dignity therapy', a promising intervention in palliative care: A comprehensive systematic literature review.
Dignity therapy is psychotherapy to relieve psychological and existential distress in patients at the end of life. Little is known about its effect. ⋯ Evidence suggests that dignity therapy is beneficial. One randomized controlled trial with patients with high levels of psychological distress shows DT efficacy in anxiety and depression scores. Other design studies report beneficial outcomes in terms of end-of-life experience. Further research should understand how dignity therapy functions to establish a means for measuring its impact and assessing whether high level of distress patients can benefit most from this therapy.
-
Palliative medicine · Jun 2017
Randomized Controlled TrialFeasibility of assessing patients' acceptable pain in a randomized controlled trial on a patient pain education program.
For patients with cancer-related pain, the numeric rating scale is the most frequently used instrument to measure pain intensity. In the literature, it has been suggested to interpret patient-reported ratings of pain in relation to the pain intensity which is acceptable to the individual patient. ⋯ Measurement of acceptable pain intensity is feasible. Patients with additional pain treatment became more critical and accepted less pain. More research is needed before we can use acceptable pain intensity as a reference for the interpretation of pain ratings.