The American journal of hospice & palliative care
-
Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Jul 2018
Recruiting and Retaining Patient-Caregiver-Nurse Triads for Qualitative Hospice Cancer Pain Research.
Qualitative pain research for hospice patients with cancer and their caregivers involves recruiting and retaining participants with multiple vulnerabilities and ethical and logistical challenges. These have been reported for studies of individuals or dyads. However, there are no reports of the related challenges and outcomes where the sampled population was a hospice triad. ⋯ Although researchers will always face challenges to enrolling individuals and groups in cancer pain studies, with careful study design, recruitment, and retention planning and research team-participant engagement, it is possible to gather a robust corpus of qualitative data.
-
Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Jul 2018
Palliative Care Consultation for Goals of Care and Future Acute Care Costs: A Propensity-Matched Study.
Hospitals are under increasing pressure to manage costs across multiple episodes of care. Most studies of the financial impact of palliative care have focused on costs during a single hospitalization. ⋯ Palliative care consultations for goals of care may decrease future health-care utilization with cost savings that persist into future hospitalizations.
-
Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Jul 2018
Bridging the Cultural Divide Between Oncology and Palliative Care Subspecialties: Clinicians' Perceptions on Team Integration.
Palliative care improves symptom burden, distress, patient and family satisfaction, and survival for patients with cancer. Oncology professional societies endorse the integration of palliative care into routine care for patients with advanced cancers. Despite this, cultural differences between medical subspecialties and the limited number of clinicians trained in palliative care lower the adoption of integrated care models. We assessed oncologists' and palliative care clinicians' perceptions about integrating oncology and palliative care using a nurse delivering palliative care to patients newly diagnosed with lung cancer. ⋯ Integration between oncology and palliative care among the 6 VA medical centers varies considerably. Nurses delivering palliative care embedded in oncology teams may facilitate the integration of these subspecialties.