Single-Dose Fluconazole Therapy for Oral Thrush in Hospice and Palliative Medicine Patients.

Background: Oral thrush is a common fungal infection of the mouth experienced by palliative medicine and hospice patients who have advanced cancer. Individuals often experience distressing symptoms that affect their oral intake with most regimens adding to pill burden. This is an open-label prospective observational study to assess the efficacy of a single-dose fluconazole 150 mg for oral thrush.

Reducing Unplanned Medical Oncology Readmissions by Improving Outpatient Care Transitions: A Process Improvement Project at the Cleveland Clinic.

Purpose: Reducing 30-day unplanned hospital readmissions is a national policy priority. We examined the impact of a quality improvement project focused on reducing oncology readmissions among patients with cancer who were admitted to palliative and general medical oncology services at the Cleveland Clinic.

Methods: Baseline rates of readmissions were gathered during the period from January 2013 to April 2014.

Hope, Symptoms, and Palliative Care.

Background: Hope is important to patients with cancer. Identifying factors that influence hope is important. Anxiety, depression, fatigue, and pain are reported to impair hope.