Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2015
A Pilot Study of a Mobile Health Pain Coping Skills Training Protocol for Patients with Persistent Cancer Pain.
Pain coping skills training (PCST) interventions have shown efficacy for reducing pain and providing other benefits in patients with cancer. However, their reach is often limited because of a variety of barriers (e.g., travel, physical burden, cost, time). ⋯ The use of mHealth technology is a feasible and acceptable option for delivery of PCST for patients with cancer. This delivery mode is likely to dramatically increase intervention access for cancer patients with pain compared to traditional in-person delivery. Preliminary data also suggest that the program is likely to produce pretreatment to post-treatment decreases in pain and other important outcomes.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2015
"The Patient is Dying, Please Call the Chaplain": The Activities of Chaplains in One Medical Center's Intensive Care Units.
Patients and families commonly experience spiritual stress during an intensive care unit (ICU) admission. Although most patients report that they want spiritual support, little is known about how these issues are addressed by hospital chaplains. ⋯ In the ICUs at this tertiary medical center, chaplain visits are uncommon and generally occur just before death among ICU patients. Communication between chaplains and physicians is rare. Chaplaincy service is primarily reserved for dying patients and their family members rather than providing proactive spiritual support. These observations highlight the need to better understand challenges and barriers to optimal chaplain involvement in ICU patient care.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2015
Caregiver Expectations: Predictors of a Worse Than Expected Caregiving Experience at the End of Life.
The gap between informal caregivers' expectations of caregiving at the end of life and their actual caregiving experience has important affective and behavioral consequences. ⋯ Caregiver expectations represent a novel and important focus for investigation into the caregiver experience. Explicitly eliciting expectations may in future lead to ways of better supporting caregivers.
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