Addressing the Challenges of Palliative Care for Homeless Veterans.

Background: Veterans who nearing the end of life (EOL) in unstable housing are not adequately served by current palliative care or homeless programs.

Methods: Multidisciplinary focus groups, interviews with community and Veterans Affairs (VA) leaders and with 29 homeless veterans were conducted in five cities. A forum of national palliative and homelessness care leaders (n=5) and representatives from each focus group (n=10), then convened.

Patient Outcomes in Dose Reduction or Discontinuation of Long-Term Opioid Therapy: A Systematic Review.

Background: Expert guidelines recommend reducing or discontinuing long-term opioid therapy (LTOT) when risks outweigh benefits, but evidence on the effect of dose reduction on patient outcomes has not been systematically reviewed.

Purpose: To synthesize studies of the effectiveness of strategies to reduce or discontinue LTOT and patient outcomes after dose reduction among adults prescribed LTOT for chronic pain.

Data Sources: MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library from inception through April 2017; reference lists; and expert contacts.

Studies of Physician-Patient Communication with Older Patients: How Often is Hearing Loss Considered? A Systematic Literature Review.

Hearing loss is remarkably prevalent in the geriatric population: one-quarter of adults aged 60-69 and 80% of adults aged 80 years and older have bilateral disabling loss. Only about one in five adults with hearing loss wears a hearing aid, leaving many vulnerable to poor communication with healthcare providers. We quantified the extent to which hearing loss is mentioned in studies of physician-patient communication with older patients, and the degree to which hearing loss is incorporated into analyses and findings.

Practices and preferences for detecting chronic medication toxicity: a pilot cross-sectional survey of health care providers focusing on decision support systems.

Rationale, Aims, And Objectives: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are a critical concern: they are costly, both in dollars and in diminishing patients' quality of life. ADRs that occur due to prolonged exposure to a pharmaceutical agent (adverse drug reactions of long latency, ADRLLs) may be easier to prevent than acute ADRs, as ADRLLs inherently require continued medication exposures. This pilot study used glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis (GIO) as an example ADRLL.