Understanding the Outcomes of Supplementary Support Services in Palliative Care for Older People. A Scoping Review and Mapping Exercise.

Context: Supplementary support services in palliative care for older people are increasingly common, but with neither recommended tools to measure outcomes nor reviews synthesizing anticipated outcomes. Common clinically focused tools may be less appropriate.

Objectives: To identify stakeholder perceptions of key outcomes from supplementary palliative care support services, then map these onto outcome measurement tools to assess relevance and item redundancy.

Strategies designed to help healthcare professionals to recruit participants to research studies.

Background: Identifying and approaching eligible participants for recruitment to research studies usually relies on healthcare professionals. This process is sometimes hampered by deliberate or inadvertent gatekeeping that can introduce bias into patient selection.

Objectives: Our primary objective was to identify and assess the effect of strategies designed to help healthcare professionals to recruit participants to research studies.

Case studies: a research strategy appropriate for palliative care?

Selecting an appropriate research strategy is key to ensuring that research questions are addressed in a way which has value and is congruent with the overall topic, questions and purpose of the research. This paper will argue that there are situations when a case study strategy is appropriate to use in palliative care research. These include: when complex situations need to be addressed; when context is central to the study; when multiple perspectives need to be recognized; when the design needs to be flexible; when the research needs to be congruent with clinical practice; when there is no strong theory to which to appeal; and when other methodologies could be difficult to conduct.