The American journal of hospice & palliative care
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Aug 2018
Quality of Life in a Hospice: A Validation of the Croatian Version of the EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL.
Quality of life is the cornerstone of palliative care, and assessing it requires validated and standardized questionnaires. However, the majority of questionnaires are not tested in a hospice setting. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the quality of life in a hospice using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 15 for Palliative Care (PAL) (EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL) questionnaire and validating it in Croatian language. ⋯ The EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL can be used successfully in Croatian palliative care. However, inevitable issues such as low retest percentage due to short survival and low physical functioning scores need to be acknowledged in further formulations of quality of life questionnaires specific to hospice care.
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Aug 2018
Five-Year Experience of an Inpatient Palliative Care Unit at an Academic Referral Center.
Palliative care units (PCUs) staffed by specialty-trained physicians and nurses have been established in a number of medical centers. The purpose of this study is to review the 5-year experience of a PCU at a large, urban academic referral center. ⋯ These data show that a successful PCU is enabled by buy in from a wide variety of referring specialists and by a multidisciplinary palliative care team focused on care of the actively dying patient as well as pain and symptom management, advance care planning, and hospice referral since a large proportion of referred patients do not die in house.
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Aug 2018
Mindful Self-Care and Secondary Traumatic Stress Mediate a Relationship Between Compassion Satisfaction and Burnout Risk Among Hospice Care Professionals.
Effective self-care in hospice is anecdotally proclaimed to reduce burnout risk. Yet, the topic has received little empirical attention. ⋯ Hospice care professional had higher self-care, CS, lower STS, and Burnout compared to published norms. Those who engaged in multiple and frequent self-care strategies experienced higher professional quality of life. Implications for hospice providers and suggestions for future research are discussed.
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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.
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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.