Sage Palliative Medicine & Chronic Care

This episode features Marc Sampedro Pilegaard (The Research Initiative of Activity Studies and Occupational Therapy, Research Unit of General Practice, Department of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark). This randomised controlled trial aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the 'Cancer Home Life-Intervention' compared with usual care with regard to patients' performance of,...

This episode features Matthew Allsop (St Gemma's Academic Unit of Palliative Care, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK). This retrospective cohort study aimed to identify patient and organisational factors that influence the duration of hospice-based palliative care in the United Kingdom prior to death. The results of this study found that despite increasing rhetoric...

This episode features Professor David Currow (University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia. Wolfson Palliative Care Research Centre, University of Hull, Hull, UK). This transnational online survey aimed to determine the impact of a phase III randomised controlled trial on palliative care clinicians' self-reported practice change.  The orginal study in question described the use of octre...

This episode features Dr Karen Neoh (St Gemma's Academic Unit of Palliative Care). This is the first study to interview hospice inpatients to explore their views about the corneal donation. The study found that patients are willing to discuss donation and further exploration of patients views should be undertaken. Full paper available from: No link avilable yet If you would like to record a podcas...

This episode features Merryn Gott (School of Nursing, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand). The aim of this study was to explore the role of community at end of life for people dying in advanced age from the perspective of their bereaved family caregivers. The study used a constructionist framework underpinned a qualitative research design. Data were analysed using critical thematic...

This episode features Professor Miriam Johnson (Director, Wolfson Palliative Care Research Centre, Hull York Medical School). The aim of this study was to: establish cardiology led palliative care versus usual care was feasible, to assess quality of data capture, to facilitate future sample size calculation and to assess survival.  Study design was a feasibility, non-randomised trial, which recrui...

This episode features Rachel Depner (Palliative Care Institute, The Center for Hospice & Palliative Care, New York, USA). She reports on her study which aimed to (a) describe a prison-based end-of-life program utilizing inmate peer caregivers, (b) identify inmate-caregiver motivations for participation, and (c) analyze the role of building trust and meaningful relationships within the correctional...

This episode features Professor Gunn Grande (University of Manchester, Manchester, UK). The aim of this qualitative study was to explore whether and how family carers are currently supported during patient discharge at end of life; to assess perceived benefits, acceptability and feasibility of using The Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNAT) Approach in the hospital setting to support carers....

This episode features Dr. Mariona Guerrero (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain). She reports on her systematic review which aimed to identify meaning in life interventions implemented in patients with advanced disease and to describe their context, mechanisms and outcomes. The study was a Systematic review of four electronic databases, and involved a realist synthesis of mean...

This episode features Anna Bone (Cicely Saunders Institute of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, King's College London). This study aimed to project where people will die from 2015 to 2040 across all care settings in England and Wales. The study was a population-based trend analysis and projections using simple linear modelling. All deaths (2004–2014) from death registration data and pred...

This episode features Briony Hudson (Louis Dundas Centre for Children's Palliative Care, UCL Institute of Child Health, London, UK  and Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, UCL Division of Psychiatry, London, UK) and Linda Oostendorp, (Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, UCL Division of Psychiatry, London, UK). They describe their study which aimed to explore how children...

This episode features Wendy Duggleby (University of Alberta, Edmonton,  Canada) who describes a study which aimed to (a) explore the transition experience of family caregivers caring for persons with advanced cancer living in the community, (b) describe potential triggers for transitions, (c) identify what influences this experience, and (d) develop a conceptual framework of their transition exper...

This episode features Claudia Virdun (Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Ultimo, NSW, Australia) who describes a study which aimed to gain a richer and deeper understanding of elements of end-of-life care that consumers consider most important within the hospital setting. The study was a meta-synthesis (review of all the qualitative research on a given subject) of consumer n...

This episode features Suresh Kumar Chhetri (Preston MND Care and Research Centre, Department of Neurology, Royal Preston Hospital, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Preston, UK) who describes a study which aimed to explore patients' experience of enteral feeding and its impact on quality of life. The study was a questionnaire based prospective analysis of 21 MND patients receivin...

This episode features Professor Matthew Allsop (Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK) who describes a study that outlined and applied an evaluation framework to examine how and when electronic documentation of advance care planning is occurring in end of life care services. The study extracted data from electronic palliative care coordination systems for 82 of 108 gen...

This episode features Professor Liz Forbat (Australian Catholic University, Canberra, ACT, Australia) and Rachel Bilton-Simek (Calvary Public Hospital Bruce, Canberra, ACT, Australia). Together they describe a Single-arm mixed-method feasibility proof-of-concept trial which aimed to design and test an innovative distance-learning educational package (PrECEPt: PalliativE Caregivers Education Packag...

This episode features the work of Philippa Cahill et al (School of Medicine, The University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia) who describes a systematic review that examines the evidence supporting family meetings as a strategy to address the needs of palliative patients and their families. The authors found that there was low-level evidence to support family meetings. Only two quan...

This episode features the work of Professor David Currow et al (Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia) who describes a study which aimed to compare characteristics, expressed unmet needs and outcomes for spousal caregivers, with other caregivers at the end of life, by gender and age. The study used data from The South Australian Health Omnibus (an annual, random, face-to-face, cross-section...

This episode features the work of Dr Eliza M Park et al (Department of Psychiatry, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA) who describes a study which aimed to describe the experience of living with advanced cancer as a parent, including illness experience, parental concerns, and treatment decision making and to explore whether these experiences differ by their funct...

This episode features the work of Dr Hilde Buiting et al (Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam and Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation (IKNL), Utrecht) who conducted a medical record review of patients selected selected patients from the nationwide Netherlands Cancer Registry. The aim of the study was to explore the content of medical records of patients with advanced non-small cell l...

This episode features the work of Dr Peter Tanuseputro et al (Bruyère Research Institute and Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa, ON, Canada) who conducted a retrospective population-level cohort study, describing palliative care in the last year of life using linked health administrative databases which the aim to provide a population perspective on end-of-life palliative care delivery acr...

This episode features the work of Dr Alze Tavares et al (Hospital Paulistano, Sao Paulo, Brazil) who conducted a study which aimed to implement a patient-centred outcome measure in daily practice, in order to fulfil one quality indicator, which is to improve pain during the 72 hours after admission, in at least 75% of patients.. Full paper from:  http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/026921...

In this episode Dr James Downar (University of Toronto, Canada) presents a study which aimed to determine whether standardized patient simulation offers benefit over didactic sessions alone for improving skill and comfort discussing goals of care of first-year internal medicine residents. Full paper from:  http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0269216316652278

In this episode Professor Robin Cohen (Departments of Oncology and Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada) presents a study which aimed to revise the McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire (McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire–Revised) while maintaining or improving its psychometric properties and length, keeping it as close as possible to the McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire to enabl...

In this episode Simon Noah Etkind (King's College London, Cicely Saunders Institute, Department of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, London, UK) presents the results of a secondary thematic analysis of interviews study. The study aimed to understand patient experiences of uncertainty in advanced illness and subsequently develop a typology of patients' responses. Full paper from:  http://...