Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Feb 2025
ReviewTraining programs in communication skills for healthcare professionals caring for children with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions and their families: A systematic review of healthcare professionals' behavioral impact and children's health outcomes.
Effective communication has potential benefits for children, their families, and healthcare professionals. Although communication skills training programs are essential for healthcare professionals, their effects remain unclear. ⋯ Communication skills training for healthcare professionals may improve their behaviors toward children with life-threatening conditions and their families. Measurement tools and timings must be standardized. Future research should develop training programs and assess their impact on children and their families, incorporating the perspective of children.
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Palliative medicine · Feb 2025
ReviewMeasuring the quality of patient-provider relationships in serious illness: A scoping review.
People affected by serious illness face several threats to their well-being: physical symptoms, psychological distress, disrupted social relations, and spiritual/existential crises. Relationships with clinicians provide a form of structured support that promotes shared decision-making and adaptive stress coping. Measuring relationship quality may improve quality assessment and patient care outcomes. However, researchers and those promoting quality improvement lack clear guidance on measuring this. ⋯ Measures include items that assess patient-provider relationship quality in serious illness settings. Researchers may consider these for evaluating and improving relationship quality, a patient-centered care and research outcome.
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Palliative medicine · Feb 2025
Multicenter Study Observational StudyChanges in perception of prognosis in the last year of life of patients with advanced cancer and its associated factors: Longitudinal results of the eQuiPe study.
Many patients with advanced cancer are unaware of their limited prognosis, however little is known about the change in awareness during the last year of their lives. ⋯ Becoming aware of their limited prognosis may make patients with advanced cancer more receptive to start end-of-life discussions. Although some patients prefer not to know their prognosis, it remains important to respectfully explore their preferences and wishes for end-of-life care.
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Palliative medicine · Feb 2025
ReviewA scoping review of global patterns in reporting race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion in palliative care randomized controlled trials: Recommendations for transparency.
Though randomized controlled trials of non-pharmacological palliative care interventions have shown positive outcomes, findings are often generalized with limited consideration for the impact of the influence of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion on said outcomes. ⋯ Improving greater transparency in study reporting of social and historical context about population demographics, including specific demographic data collected, may better identify unmet palliative needs, facilitate cross-cultural interpretation, and improve adaptation and implementation of non-pharmacological palliative care interventions.
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Palliative medicine · Feb 2025
Randomized Controlled TrialOrally dissolving pilocarpine tablets for xerostomia in advanced cancer: A pilot N-of-1 feasibility study.
Xerostomia is a common and difficult symptom experienced by patients with cancer. Pilocarpine is a cholinergic agent that stimulates salivation. ⋯ Recruitment to an N-of-1 trial for xerostomia is feasible but attrition was high (50%). Early dropout may have been due to the trial length, complexity, appropriateness or number of questionnaires. Adverse events were generally mild. Two of 10 participants were considered to have benefited from pilocarpine warranting ongoing treatment.