Are Health-Care Providers Well Prepared in Providing Optimal End-of-Life Care to Critically Ill Patients? A Cross-Sectional Study at a Tertiary Care Hospital in the United States.

It is important for health-care providers to be comfortable in providing end-of-life (EOL) care to critically ill patients and realizing when continuing aggressive measures would be futile. Therefore, there is a need to understand health-care providers' self-perceived skills and barriers to providing optimum EOL care. A total of 660 health-care providers from medicine and surgery departments were asked via e-mail to complete an anonymous survey assessing their self-reported EOL care competencies, of which 238 responses were received.

Frequency, characteristics, and correlates of pain in a pilot study of colorectal cancer survivors 1-10 years post-treatment.

Objective: The long-term effects of disease and treatment in colorectal cancer (CRC) survivors are poorly understood. This study examined the prevalence and characteristics of pain in a sample of CRC survivors up to 10 years post-treatment.

Design: One hundred cancer-free CRC survivors were randomly chosen from an institutional database and completed a telephone survey using the Brief Pain Inventory, Neuropathic Pain Questionnaire-Short Form, Quality of Life Cancer Survivor Summary, Brief Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale, Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, and Fear of Recurrence Questionnaire.

Preliminary evaluation of the reliability and validity of the Shame and Stigma Scale in head and neck cancer.

Background: Facial disfigurement from head and neck cancer can lead to the development of shame and a perception of stigma. We sought to develop the Shame and Stigma Scale (SSS) to measure this. Items were administered to 104 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity, together with measures of quality of life and adaptation.