Nurse-led supportive Coordinated Transitional Care (CTraC) program improves care for veterans with serious illness.

Background: The Coordinated Transitional Care (CTraC) program is a telephone-based, nurse-driven program shown to decrease readmissions. The aim of this project was to implement and evaluate an adapted version of CTraC, Supportive CTraC, to improve the quality of transitional and end-of-life care for veterans with serious illness.

Methods: We used the Replicating Effective Programs framework to guide adaptation and implementation.

Pharmacologic Pain Management: What Radiation Oncologists Should Know.

Individuals with cancer experience a host of symptoms, especially when the malignancy is advanced. Pain occurs from the cancer itself or related treatments. Undertreated pain contributes to patient suffering and lack of engagement in cancer-directed therapies.

Challenges for Patients Dying of Heart Failure and Cancer.

Background: Hospice and palliative care were originally implemented for patients dying of cancer, both of which continue to be underused in patients with heart failure (HF). The objective of this study was to understand the unique challenges faced by patients dying of HF compared with cancer.

Methods: We assessed differences in demographics, health status, and financial burden between patients dying of HF and cancer from the Health and Retirement Study.

Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Caring for Jewish Patients.

Judaism, one of the world's oldest religions, claims an estimated 14.3 million members worldwide. There is great diversity in terms of identity, practice, and belief among people who identify as Jewish.

Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Opioid Use Disorder.

Since the prevalence of substance use disorders, and opioid use disorder (OUD) specifically, remains high and represents a public health crisis, it is critical that palliative care (PC) providers have a broad understanding of this class of chronic, yet treatable, diseases. Conceptualizing stigma associated with OUD, treatment modalities available, and educational opportunities are key factors in providing patient-centered care. A solid foundation of knowledge about OUD in the setting of serious illness is also crucial as PC providers often recommend or prescribe opioids for symptom management in patients who also have OUD.

Managing Opioid Use Disorder in the Setting of a Terminal Disease: Opportunities and Challenges.

Opioids have long been a mainstay of symptom management in palliative care (PC), allowing patients with terminal illnesses to have an improved quality of life. Unfortunately, these same medications have contributed to the explosion of the opioid epidemic. This article explores the case of a patient with opioid use disorder (OUD) and pancreatic cancer.

Improving Palliative Care Team Meetings: Structure, Inclusion, and "Team Care".

Increasing demands on palliative care teams point to the need for continuous improvement to ensure teams are working collaboratively and efficiently. This quality improvement initiative focused on improving interprofessional team meeting efficiency and subsequently patient care. Meeting start and end times improved from a mean of approximately 9 and 6 minutes late in the baseline period, respectively, to a mean of 4.

Complexity perplexity: a systematic review to describe the measurement of medication regimen complexity.

Introduction: Complex medication regimens are error prone and challenging for patients, which may impact medication adherence and safety. No universal method to assess the complexity of medication regimens (CMRx) exists. The authors aim to review literature for CMRx measurements to establish consistencies and, secondarily, describe CMRx impact on healthcare outcomes.

Aging, antiretrovirals, and adherence: a meta analysis of adherence among older HIV-infected individuals.

Introduction: Older adults are generally considered to be at greater risk for medication non-adherence due to factors such as medication complexity, side effects, cost, and cognitive decline. However, this generalization may not apply to older adults with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Regardless of age, suboptimal adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) can lead to increased viral load, immunosuppression, drug-resistant viral strains, co-morbidities, and opportunistic infections.

Patient-physician boundaries in palliative care training: a case study and discussion.

Abstract The subject of patient-physician boundaries has been most extensively explored in the psychiatric literature, but to date, little has been published about this concept within the realm of palliative care. Some palliative care physicians may be particularly susceptible to boundary crossings due to the intensity and intimacy of the bonds that form with patients at the end-of-life. We illustrate the concept of boundary crossings and violations in palliative care using the case of a palliative care trainee who experiences difficulties in maintaining boundaries with a dying patient.

Ovarian carcinoma with thyroid metastases causing clinical hypothyroidism: a case report.

Background: Ovarian cancer is known to metastasize to the thyroid gland. Despite an incidence of ovarian metastasis to the thyroid of 3-15%, clinical hypothyroidism resulting from such metastasis has not yet been reported. We present a case of metastatic ovarian cancer to the thyroid resulting in clinical hypothyroidism.