Browse Items · Pediatric Palliative Care Library

Emotion regulation in patients with rheumatic diseases: validity and responsiveness of the Emotional Approach Coping Scale (EAC)

BACKGROUND: Chronic rheumatic diseases are painful conditions which are not entirely controllable and can place high emotional demands on individuals. Increasing evidence has shown that emotion regulation in terms of actively processing and…

Ethnicity, race, and advance directives in an inpatient palliative care consultation service.

OBJECTIVE: Although race and ethnic background are known to be important factors in the completion of advance directives, there is a dearth of literature specifically investigating the effect of race and ethnicity on advance directive completion rate…

Tags: 2013, 80 And Over, Adult, Advance Directives/eh [Ethnology], African Americans/statistics & numerical data, Aged, Asian Continental Ancestry Group/sn [Statistics & Numerical Data], Attitude to Death/eh [Ethnology], Backlog, Cooper LB, Cross-cultural Comparison, Decision Making, DNAR, European Continental Ancestry Group/sn [Statistics & Numerical Data], Female, Hispanic Americans/sn [Statistics & Numerical Data], Humans, Journal Article, Lesser ML, Liberman T, Male, Middle Aged, Mir Tanveer P, New York/ep [Epidemiology], Nouryan CN, Palliative & Supportive Care, Palliative Care/og [Organization & Administration], Pekmezaris R, Program Evaluation, Referral and Consultation/og [Organization & Administration], Resuscitation Orders, Sison CP, Spirituality, Terminal Care/og [organization & Administration], Wolf-Klein GP, Zaide GB

Evaluation of a Continuous Quality Improvement Initiative for End-Of-Life Care for Older Noncancer Patients

OBJECTIVES: The burden of suffering among patients with end-stage chronic diseases may be greater than those of cancer patients, as a result of longer duration of illness trajectory and high prevalence of symptoms, yet they may be less likely to…

The experiences of Chinese family members of terminally ill patients - a qualitative study

AIM: To describe and understand the experiences of Chinese family members of terminally ill patients during the end of life process in a palliative care unit. BACKGROUND: Palliative care aims to provide care to dying patients and their family…

Use of hospitals, physician visits, and hospice care during last six months of life among cohorts loyal to highly respected hospitals in the United States

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the use of healthcare resources during the last six months of life among patients of US hospitals with strong reputations for high quality care in managing chronic illness. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study based on claims…

Subcutaneous clodronate: a study evaluating efficacy in hypercalcemia of malignancy and local toxicity

The logistics of administering intravenous bisphosphonates may be problematic in the care of advanced cancer patients, especially in the home setting. Hypodermoclysis is a convenient method of administering fluid via subcutaneous infusion, presently…

Impact of writing "comfort measures only" orders in a community teaching hospital.

OBJECTIVES: We compared end-of-life care for patients with and without orders for "comfort measures only" (CMO) and evaluated whether standards for palliative medicine were met., DESIGN: We retrospectively reviewed the charts of 40 patients, 20 with…

Final transitions: family caregiving at the end of life

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to understand how caregivers make the transition to end-stage caregiving and to illuminate its unique aspects using a stress process model. METHODS: Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 74 caregivers of a…

End-of-life practices in the Netherlands under the Euthanasia Act

BACKGROUND: In 2002, an act regulating the ending of life by a physician at the request of a patient with unbearable suffering came into effect in the Netherlands. In 2005, we performed a follow-up study of euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and…

Care for patients in the last months of life: the Belgian Sentinel Network Monitoring End-of-Life Care study

BACKGROUND: Population-based studies monitoring end-of-life care are lacking. This study describes involvement of caregivers, access to specialist palliative care, treatment goals (cure, life-prolonging, or palliation), and content of end-of-life…

Place of death: preferences among cancer patients and their carers

The place of death of cancer patients has become an important theme in UK cancer and palliative care policy. This paper examines the place of death preferences of 41 terminally ill cancer patients and 18 of their informal carers, living in the…

HIV/AIDS symptom management in Southern Africa

We describe self-reported strategies used by persons living with HIV/AIDS in Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa, and Swaziland to manage common HIV-related symptoms. A questionnaire asked participants to list three to six symptoms they had recently…

Conflict in the care of patients with prolonged stay in the ICU: types, sources, and predictors

OBJECTIVE: To determine types, sources, and predictors of conflicts among patients with prolonged stay in the ICU. DESIGN AND SETTING: We prospectively identified conflicts by interviewing treating physicians and nurses at two stages during the…

Experience in the use of the palliative care outcome scale.

GOALS OF WORK: The objective of the study is to assess the Palliative Care Outcome Scale (POS) as a potential audit tool within a specialist cancer centre. It also aims to answer the following questions: does the tool identify problem areas and…

Contrasting emotional approach coping with passive coping for chronic myofascial pain

Passive or emotion-focused coping strategies are typically related to worse pain and adjustment among chronic pain patients. Emotional approach coping (EAC), however, is a type of emotion-focused coping that appears to be adaptive in some nonpain…

Half of older Americans seen in emergency department in last month of life; most admitted to hospital, and many die there

Emergency department use contributes to high end-of-life costs and is potentially burdensome for patients and family members. We examined emergency department use in the last months of life for patients age sixty-five or older who died while enrolled…

Managing end-of-life care: comparing the experiences of terminally Ill patients in managed care and fee for service

There have been no published empirical studies comparing the experiences of terminally ill patients in managed care organizations (MCOs) and those in fee for service (FFS). This investigation represents the first empirical study to systematically…

A pilot study of palliative medicine fellows' hospice home visits.

This was a prospective descriptive study of hospice physician home visits (HVs) conducted by Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellows. Our objectives were 1) to improve our knowledge of hospice care at home by describing physician HVs 2) to identify…

A randomized comparison of patients' understanding of number needed to treat and other common risk reduction formats

BACKGROUND: Commentators have suggested that patients may understand quantitative information about treatment benefits better when they are presented as numbers needed to treat (NNT) rather than as absolute or relative risk reductions. OBJECTIVE: To…

Tags: 2003, 80 And Over, Aged, Backlog, Comprehension, Cross-sectional Studies, Data Interpretation, Female, Humans, Journal Article, Journal Of General Internal Medicine, Lewis CL, Male, Middle Aged, Pignone MP, Risk, Sheridan SL, statistical, Treatment Outcome

Psychiatric and physical morbidity effects of dementia caregiving: prevalence, correlates, and causes

The dementia caregiving literature is reviewed with the goals of (a) assessing the prevalence and magnitude of psychiatric and physical morbidity effects among caregivers, (b) identifying individual and contextual correlates of reported health…

Methadone titration in opioid-resistant cancer pain

AIM: To assess the use of methadone in patients with cancer pain who fail to respond to increasing doses of other opioids or experience intolerable side-effects from them. METHOD: Inpatients of a specialist palliative care unit were titrated onto…

Safety and efficacy of rosuvastatin therapy for the prevention of hyperlipidemia in adult cardiac transplant recipients

BACKGROUND: Hyperlipidemia after orthotopic heart transplantation (OHT) is associated with immunosuppression. Many OHT patients have increased lipid levels above published guidelines despite treatment with high doses of statins. Treatment with…

Age-related changes of beta-endorphin and cholecystokinin in human and rat mononuclear cells

Beta-endorphin (BE) and cholecystokinin (CCK) were measured in fresh PBMC isolated from human subjects and rats. The BE and CCK PBMC contents increased significantly with age both in human and rat models. Moreover, polyclonal stimulation induced a…

Oral opioid therapy for chronic peripheral and central neuropathic pain

BACKGROUND: Although opioids are commonly used to treat chronic neuropathic pain, there are limited data to guide their use. Few controlled trials have been performed, and many types of neuropathic pain remain unstudied. METHODS: Adults with…

Satisfaction with information provided to Danish cancer patients: validation and survey results

OBJECTIVES: To validate five items (CPWQ-inf) regarding satisfaction with information provided to cancer patients from health care staff, assess the prevalence of dissatisfaction with this information, and identify factors predicting dissatisfaction.…

Internet versus mailed questionnaires: A randomized comparison.

BACKGROUND: The use of Internet-based questionnaires for collection of data to evaluate patient education and other interventions has increased in recent years. Many self-report instruments have been validated using paper-and-pencil versions, but we…

Using drugs to end life without an explicit request of the patient

A small proportion of deaths result from the use of drugs with the intention to hasten death without an explicit request of the patient. Additional insight into its characteristics is needed for evaluating this practice. In the Netherlands in 2001,…

Assessing the clinical importance of symptomatic improvements. An illustration in rheumatology

OBJECTIVE: To estimate when a difference in disability symptoms is sufficiently large to be important to individual patients. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of two groups: derivation set (n = 46) and validation set (n = 57). SETTING: The Arthritis…

Neuropathic cancer pain: prevalence, severity, analgesics and impact from the European Palliative Care Research Collaborative-Computerised Symptom Assessment study

BACKGROUND: Neuropathic pain causes greater pain intensity and worse quality of life than nociceptive pain. There are no published data that confirm this in the cancer population. AIM: We hypothesised that patients with neuropathic cancer pain had…

Personality characteristics as differential variables of the pain experience

This study analyzes the relationships between neuroticism, extroversion, age, and sex and the intensity of perceived pain and the coping strategies used. We worked with a sample of 96 patients with chronic pain. The assessment tools were the…

Tags: 2004, 80 And Over, Adaptation, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Backlog, Female, Humans, Journal Article, Journal Of Behavioral Medicine, López Martínez AE, Male, Middle Aged, Pain, Personality Disorders, Psychological, Ramirez MC, Zarazaga RE

Medicare cost in matched hospice and non-hospice cohorts

Hospice care is perceived as enhancing life quality for patients with advanced, incurable illness, but cost comparisons to non-hospice patients are difficult to make. The very large Medicare expenditures for care given during the end of life,…

Terminal dehydration, a compassionate treatment

Quality assurance by specification and achievement of goals in palliative cancer treatment

As the goals of palliative cancer treatments have not always been clearly specified, this paper describes how frequently the goals of palliative cancer treatment can be specified according to a given definition and how frequently those specified…

Integrating oncology and palliative home care in Italy: the experience of the "L'Aquila per la Vita" Home Care Unit

AIM: To evaluate the efficacy of a home care program, closely integrated with a medical oncology department. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The charts, prospectively recorded, of all the patients treated at home by the "L'Aquila per la Vita" Home Care Unit…

The Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale: an instrument for the evaluation of symptom prevalence, characteristics and distress

The Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale (MSAS) is a new patient-rated instrument that was developed to provide multidimensional information about a diverse group of common symptoms. This study evaluated the reliability and validity of the MSAS in the…

Neostigmine for the treatment of acute colonic pseudo-obstruction

BACKGROUND: Acute colonic pseudo-obstruction -- that is, massive dilation of the colon without mechanical obstruction -- may develop after surgery or severe illness. Although it may resolve with conservative therapy, colonoscopic decompression is…

Outcome evaluation in a home palliative care service

The complexity of assessing the impact of palliative care is much greater than in other fields of medicine, due to the shortcomings of traditional outcome indicators. We conducted a prospective study to describe the patient's quality of life at the…

Brain and gut neuropeptides in peripheral blood mononuclear cells

Neuropeptides, initially thought to be common features of gut and brain, are only synthesized in immune cells and modulate immune functions. The presence and possible functions of these peptides in immune cells in both physiological or pathological…

Breast cancer patients' attitudes about rationing postlumpectomy radiation therapy: applicability of trade-off methods to policy-making

PURPOSE: Along with evidence, clinical policies must take patients' values into account. Particularly where evidence is limited and where assumptions of utility-maximizing behavior may not be valid, new methods such as trade-off techniques (TOTs),…

The benefits of a hospital-based inpatient palliative care consultation service: preliminary outcome data

This report describes the multiple complementary analytic methods used to create a composite evaluation of the benefits of a hospital-based inpatient palliative care consultation service at Montefiore Medical Center in its preliminary phase. We…

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