Instruments for Evaluating Student Learning Outcomes in Palliative Care: A Literature Review.

Primary palliative care is a core component of nursing practice for which all students must receive formal education. Through competency-based education, nursing students develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills to deliver quality primary palliative care before they transition to practice. Nurse educators in academic and practice settings should use reliable and valid means to evaluate student learning across cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains.

Use of Goals in Cancer Pain Management: A Systematic Review.

Context: Cancer pain is multidimensional and management should be individualized to patient goals. The current standard for pain goal assessment is the personal pain goal (PPG), a numeric rating for tolerable pain intensity. However, the PPG may not accurately capture a personally meaningful goal for tailoring pain management.

Gag order laws threaten nursing education and health equity.

Since 2021, some state legislators have passed laws that limit what public institutions can teach about discrimination. The number of these laws, also called gag orders, is increasing despite a national outcry against racism, homophobia and transphobia, and other forms of discrimination. Many nursing and other professional healthcare organizations have recognized and published statements decrying racism in healthcare and calling for an increased focus on health disparities and advancing health equity.

Patient Goals in Hospice Cancer Pain Management: A Total Pain Case Scenario.

Evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and hospice agency policies and procedures direct nursing assessment and interventions for the care of persons with cancer-related pain. Guidelines assert that pain should be assessed from a holistic perspective that considers physical, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects. In addition, guidelines maintain that hospice nurses should ascertain patient goals for pain management.

Functional Goals and How Palliative Patients With Cancer Managed Pain.

Background: High rates of pain impede quality of life for persons with advanced cancer. Research has identified barriers to cancer pain control. Little has been written, however, about the unique motivating goals and individual pain management behaviors of persons with cancer-related pain.

Nurse-Led Motivational Interviewing for Setting Functional Cancer Pain Goals.

Purpose: Persons with advanced cancers experience high rates of pain. Nursing interventions for pain, which are tailored to the individual patient, may support motivation to engage in self-management and should include setting of realistic functional goals. For patients with advanced cancer, functional pain goals include personally important activities, measurable across clinical encounters.

Laboratory-Generated Urine Toxicology Interpretations: A Mixed Methods Study.

Background: Clinicians frequently order urine drug testing (UDT) for patients on chronic opioid therapy (COT), yet often have difficulty interpreting test results accurately.

Objectives: To evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of a laboratory-generated urine toxicology interpretation service for clinicians prescribing COT.

Study Design: Type II hybrid-convergent mixed methods design (implementation) and pre-post prospective cohort study with matched controls (effectiveness).

Leveraging mobile health technology and research methodology to optimize patient education and self-management support for advanced cancer pain.

Purpose: Patient education is critical for management of advanced cancer pain, yet the benefits of psychoeducational interventions have been modest. We used mobile health (mHealth) technology to better meet patients' needs.

Methods: Using the Agile and mHealth Development and Evaluation Frameworks, a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, researchers, patients, and design specialists followed a four-phase iterative process to develop comprehensive, tailored, multimedia cancer pain education for a patient-facing smartphone application.

Cancer Pain Social Processes and Pain Management in Home Hospice Care.

Background: The high incidence of pain associated with end-stage cancers indicates the need for a new approach to understanding how and why patients, caregivers, and clinicians make pain management choices.

Aims: To provide pilot data and preliminary categories for developing a middle-range nursing theory and framework through which to scrutinize and identify problematic processes involved in management of poorly controlled pain for home hospice patients, caregivers, and nurses, the "caring triad."

Design: A qualitative pilot study using constructivist grounded theory methodology to answer the question, "In the context of hospice, what are the social processes occurring for and between each member of the hospice caring triad and how can these processes be categorized?"

Settings: Home hospice care.

Recruiting and Retaining Patient-Caregiver-Nurse Triads for Qualitative Hospice Cancer Pain Research.

Background: Qualitative pain research for hospice patients with cancer and their caregivers involves recruiting and retaining participants with multiple vulnerabilities and ethical and logistical challenges. These have been reported for studies of individuals or dyads. However, there are no reports of the related challenges and outcomes where the sampled population was a hospice triad.

Pain and social processes for hospice cancer patients: An integrative review.

Purpose: Hospice cancer patients experience poorly-controlled pain in spite of widely-disseminated evidence-based guidelines for use by hospice care practitioners. Pain management occurs in the context of the interdisciplinary team, centered on a caring triad in the home: the person with pain, their caregiver, and their nurse. This review: 1) Summarizes what is known about differing ways that members of the hospice caring triad (patients, caregivers, and nurses) interpret and respond to cancer pain, in order to develop a cancer pain social processes theoretical framework, 2) Identifies gaps in understanding of hospice cancer pain social processes, and 3) Identifies framework concepts for research-based clinical practice with potential to improve pain outcomes.