J Palliat Care
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It is difficult to provide optimal care to people with advanced cancer presenting to emergency departments (EDs). Recent data suggest that the ED environment, the skills and priorities of treating staff, and the lack of clear communication related to goals of care contribute to the difficulty. By exploring the views of emergency, palliative care (PC), and oncology clinicians on the care of these patients, this study aimed to describe potential solutions. ⋯ The provision of care to patients with advanced cancer in the ED occurs across sites, across disciplines, and across teams. To make improvements to care, we must address these complexities. The improvements suggested in this study place the patient (and the patient's family) at the centre of care.
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Practice guidelines indicate that patients who have months to weeks left to live should not be offered chemotherapy. We examined factors associated with clinician-reported poor performance status as determined by the Palliative Performance Scale (PPS) and subsequent initiation of intravenous (IV) chemotherapy in an ambulatory cancer population in Ontario, Canada. ⋯ A small number of cancer patients with poor performance status began IV chemotherapy in the month following assessment.
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Prognostat is an interactive Web-based prognostic tool for estimating hospice patient survival based on a patient's Palliative Performance Scale (PPS) score, age, gender, and cancer status. The tool was developed using data from 5,893 palliative care patients, which was collected at the Victoria Hospice in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, beginning in 1994. This study externally validates Prognostat with a retrospective cohort of 590 hospice patients at LifePath Hospice and Palliative Care in Florida, USA. ⋯ Though the Kaplan-Meier curves show each PPS level to be distinct and significantly different, the findings reveal low agreement between observed survival in our cohort of patients and survival predicted by the prognostic tool. Before developing a new prognostic model, researchers are encouraged to update survival estimates obtained using Prognostat with the information from their cohort of patients. If it is to be useful to patients and clinicians, Prognostat needs to explicitly report patient risk scores and estimates of baseline survival.
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Research on palliative care services in Thailand is incomplete. We conducted a countrywide cross-sectional postal survey to update the situation. We approached hospitals and asked them to respond to a questionnaire. ⋯ The criteria of having at least one trained doctor and nurse on staff was met by 17 percent of the hospitals. Only seven hospitals, most of them associated with medical schools, employed both a doctor and a nurse who had been trained in palliative care for one month or more; these professionals mainly provided hospital and home palliative care team services. Our survey reveals the lack of both health care personnel fully trained in palliative care and specialist palliative care services in Thailand.