Literature Review

"A strong reason why I enjoy coming to work": Clinician acceptability of a palliative and supportive care intervention (PACT) for older adults with acute myeloid leukemia and their care partners Journal of Geriatric Oncology; by Ayomide Okanlawon Bankole, Natasha Renee Burse, Victoria Crowder, Ya-Ning Chan, Rachel Hirschey, Ahrang Jung, Kelly R Tan, Susan Coppola, Mackenzi Pergolotti, Daniel R Richardson, Ashley Leak Bryant; 3/20/24 Introduction: ... In this study, we examined clinician acceptability of a NIH-funded interdisciplinary PAlliative and Supportive Care inTervention (PACT) for older adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and their care partners that transcends both inpatient and outpatient settings. Results: ... Five themes were identified in the thematic analysis: (1) Emotions and affect towards the intervention, (2) Intervention coherence and self-efficacy, (3) Barriers, burden, and opportunity costs of delivering the intervention, (4) Usefulness and effectiveness of the intervention, and (5) Recommendations to improve intervention delivery.

Patient and caregiver satisfaction of a palliative care chronic diseases clinic during COVID lockdowns Chronic Illness; by Xiang Rong Sim, Jade Hudson, Catriona Parker, Fiona Runacres, Peter Poon; 3/20/24, online ahead of print Objectives: To assess the quality assurance of a specialist palliative care clinic focused on chronic diseases and explore the satisfaction and acceptability of the telemedicine model amongst patients and caregivers.Results: ... the most common primary diagnosis was renal failure. Participants rated telemedicine as easier to access than face-to-face appointments due to convenience. Telemedicine was rated highly for future utility, with video consultations being perceived as more useful than telephone consultations. Participants responded overwhelmingly well towards the clinic.

Legendary healthcare researcher John E. Wennberg, who shaped efforts to reform the nation’s healthcare system, dies at 89Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, by Susan Green; 3/18/24John E. (Jack) Wennberg, MD, MPH, founder and director emeritus of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, the Peggy Y. Thomson Professor in the Evaluative Clinical Sciences Emeritus at the Geisel School of Medicine, and founding editor of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, died March 10, 2024. He was 89 years old. “His work pioneered a field that has grown into an entirely new academic discipline in medicine,” Duane Compton, PhD, Geisel School of Medicine dean, says. ... Wennberg focused on improving decision quality by combining better clinical evidence with informed patient preferences. The introduction of shared decision-making between clinicians and patients to preserve warranted variation due to patient preferences is now embedded in health policies across the globe.

Specialized nursing facility clinicians improve end-of-life care Cornell Chronicle, by Marijke Vroomen Durning, Weill Cornell Medicine; 3/15/24 Specialized nursing facility clinicians, or SNFists, may decrease the likelihood of nursing home residents experiencing stressful hospitalizations and improve the quality of life in their last days, according to researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine. The paper, published March 15 in JAMA Network Open, examined how SNFists uniquely impacted the care of nursing home residents in their last 90 days, compared with those cared for by other clinicians. This large-scale study is the first of its kind. 

Palliative care cuts costs for metastatic cancer

Palliative care across the spectrum of heart failure JACC Heart Fail;  y Laura P Gelfman, Moritz Blum, Modele O Ogunniyi, Colleen K McIlvennan, Dio Kavalieratos , Larry A Allen; online ahead of print 2/27/24; print 3/8/24 Persons with heart failure (HF) often suffer from poor symptom control, decreased quality of life, and poor communication with their health care providers. ... New models are required that are better informed by high-quality data, engage a range of health care providers in primary palliative care principles, and have clear triggers for specialty palliative care engagement, with specific palliative interventions tailored to patient's illness trajectory and changing needs.

Editorial: Illness trajectories in the age of big data The BMJ; by Peter Tanuseputro, Colleen Webber, and James Downar; 3/1/24For decades, healthcare providers have understood that patients follow typical trajectories of health decline as they approach the end of life, and they have used this understanding to help patients and families anticipate the dying process. Traditional trajectories focus on function or overall health status and include sudden death, terminal illness ..., organ failure ..., and frailty ... Two Education articles in the BMJ add novel dimensions to our understanding of health decline. Murray et al explain how declines in function do not always mirror declines in social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. They also add a new trajectory, multimorbidity, to describe a person with conditions from multiple trajectories (such as heart disease from organ failure and cognitive impairment from frailty).

"The great escape": How an incident of elopement gave rise to trauma informed palliative care for a patient experiencing multiple disadvantage BMC Palliat Care, by Sam Quinn, Libby Ferguson, Derek Read, and Naomi Richards; 2/28/24Background: This case report ... illustrates how unresolved traumatic experiences across the life course can affect a patient's engagement with palliative care and offers insights into the flexibility and adaptations necessary for taking a trauma informed approach to care for an individual experiencing multiple disadvantage. 

NIA is leading efforts to coordinate NIH palliative care researchNational Institute on Aging, by Chandra Keller and Alexis Bakos; 2/28/24

Experiences of nursing students providing end of life care for children and young people: A focus group study Elsevier, by Clair Camara, Leah Rosengarten and Jane Callum; 2/27/24This study aims to help improve understanding of the lived experiences of children's nursing students who have cared for a patient at, during, or immediately following end-of-life. The study describes the emotions experienced by children's nursing students and explores the student nurses' perceptions of education and support needs around caring for [Children and Young People] CYP during end-of-life care.

The impact of early palliative care interventions on the utilization of medical care resources for end-of-life patientsResearch Square (not peer reviewed; under review by BMC Palliative Care), by Chia-Chia Lin, Tsing-Fen Ho, Chang-Hung Lin, Nu-Man Tsai Tsai, Yu-Hung Kuo, Ju-Huei Chien; 2/12/24(Taiwan) Patients at the end-of-life who received palliative care experienced a reduced incidence of aggressive medical interventions before death. These encompassed activities such as stays in the intensive care unit, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, endotracheal intubation, respiratory ventilator support, and blood transfusions.

Leadership core competencies in palliative care — Recommendations from the European Association for Palliative Care: Delphi StudyJournal of Palliative Medicine, by Olivia Parczyk, Gerrit Frerich, Martin Loučka, Raymond Voltz, Sheila Payne; 2/14/24The eight domains [of leadership: research, advocacy and media, communication, teamwork, project management, organizational learning and sustainability, leading change, and personal traits] provide evidence for teaching of leadership competencies in palliative care. We recommend that exploring, identifying, and integrating leadership competencies in palliative care are given more attention in educational curricula and in training interventions.