Journal of pain and symptom management
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PC-FACS (Fast Article Critical Summaries for Clinicians in Palliative Care) provides hospice and palliative care clinicians with concise summaries of the most important findings from more than 100 medical and scientific journals. If you have colleagues who would benefit from receiving PC-FACS, please encourage them to join the AAHPM at aahpm.org. Comments from readers are welcomed at pc-facs@aahpm.org.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2018
Developing a Healing Environment for Broken Souls of Patients With Life-Threatening Illnesses and Their Caregivers.
What a privilege it is to be able to touch those sacred spaces in the soul of each person that we encounter everyday. Patients with life-threatening illnesses can struggle with physical, emotional, and existential and spiritual concerns and the suffering of caregivers. ⋯ Embracing the spiritual care into our daily practice is a common effort and a service provided by each member of the team. Our role as members of the collective soul is to preserve human dignity and raise up the broken souls of patients living with life-threatening illness by creating healing environments.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2018
Case ReportsDistributive Justice: An Ethical Priority in Global Palliative Care.
Providing care to cancer patients in resource-poor settings often demands complex trade-offs regarding resource allocation. It is estimated that over 60% of all cancer deaths worldwide occur in low- and middle-income countries, where channels to care and appropriate symptom management interventions are overstressed or obsolete. Concepts of distributive justice underlie much of global health policy. ⋯ In this article, we use the case of a young woman diagnosed with terminal cancer in an underserved community in rural Uganda to illustrate the conflicting concepts of fairness, which dictate distribution of scarce resources in low- and middle-income countries. Notions of distributive justice vary across cultural, societal, and even individual norms, with some definitions allowing for discrimination based on merit or need. Resource allocation in the absence of cultural humility or a genuine willingness to understand decision-making priorities in a given culture can contribute to inequity and may have harmful consequences.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2018
Variations in Hospice Utilization and Length of Stay for Medicare Patients With Melanoma.
Timely hospice referral is an indicator of high-quality end-of-life care for cancer patients. Variations in patient characteristics associated with hospice utilization and length of stay have been demonstrated in studies of other malignancies but not melanoma. ⋯ Rates of hospice enrollment increased over time but remained under accepted quality benchmarks with variations evident in those who receive hospice services. Efforts to increase access to earlier hospice care for all patients dying with melanoma are essential.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2018
WITHDRAWN: Recommendations for evaluation and management of pain in patients with mucopolysaccharidosis in Latin America.
The Publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2018.03.023. The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal.