Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · May 2015
ReviewPatients' preferences in palliative care: A systematic mixed studies review.
It is necessary to develop palliative care to meet existing and future needs of patients and their families. It is important to include knowledge of patient preferences when developing high-quality palliative care services. Previous reviews have focused on patient preferences with regard to specific components of palliative care. There is a need to review research on patient's combined preferences for all elements that constitute palliative care. ⋯ The four themes may be useful for guiding clinical practice and measurements of quality, with the overall goal of meeting future needs and improving quality in palliative care services to suit patients' preferences.
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Palliative medicine · May 2015
Randomized Controlled TrialPreparing palliative home care nurses to act as facilitators for physicians' learning: Evaluation of a training programme.
Palliative care requires a multidisciplinary care team. General practitioners often ask specialised palliative home care teams for support. Working with specialised nurses offers learning opportunities, also called workplace learning. This can be enhanced by the presence of a learning facilitator. ⋯ Training palliative home care team nurses as facilitator of general practitioners' workplace learning is a feasible but complex intervention. Personal characteristics, interpersonal relationships and contextual variables have to be taken into account. Training expert palliative care nurses to facilitate general practitioners' workplace learning requires careful and individualised mentoring.
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Palliative medicine · May 2015
Characteristics of episodic breathlessness as reported by patients with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer: Results of a descriptive cohort study.
Episodic breathlessness is one form of refractory breathlessness. Better understanding of the symptom is necessary for effective management. ⋯ Most breathlessness episodes are short (minutes) and severe with significant differences between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer patients. Effective management strategies are warranted to improve symptom relief and coping.