Stepped Palliative Care for Patients With Advanced Lung Cancer: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Despite the evidence for early palliative care improving outcomes, it has not been widely implemented in part due to palliative care workforce limitations.

Objective: To evaluate a stepped-care model to deliver less resource-intensive and more patient-centered palliative care for patients with advanced cancer.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Randomized, nonblinded, noninferiority trial of stepped vs early palliative care conducted between February 12, 2018, and December 15, 2022, at 3 academic medical centers in Boston, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Durham, North Carolina, among 507 patients who had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer within the past 12 weeks.

Supportive Care for Cancer Patients Via Telehealth: Breaking Bad News and Providing Palliative Care Virtually.

Delivering oncologic care via telemedicine has presented a unique set of benefits and challenges. Discussions of sensitive topics between patients and providers can be difficult on a virtual platform. Although it was imperative to utilize telemedicine to keep cancer patients safe during the height of the pandemic, its continued use in the postvaccination era has provided important conveniences to both providers and patients.

Improving serious illness communication: a qualitative study of clinical culture.

Objective: Communication about patients' values, goals, and prognosis in serious illness (serious illness communication) is a cornerstone of person-centered care yet difficult to implement in practice. As part of Serious Illness Care Program implementation in five health systems, we studied the clinical culture-related factors that supported or impeded improvement in serious illness conversations.

Methods: Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews of clinical leaders, implementation teams, and frontline champions.

Video and In-Person Palliative Care Delivery Challenges before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Context: Palliative care (PC) clinicians faced many challenges delivering outpatient care during the coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Objectives: We described trends for in-person and video visit PC delivery challenges before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

Factors associated with psychological distress in caregivers of patients with malignant gliomas.

Purpose: Caregivers of patients with malignant gliomas are at risk for psychological distress. However, factors associated with distress in this population have not been well described. We conducted a prospective study evaluating psychological distress in patients with malignant gliomas and their caregivers and exploring factors associated with caregiver distress.

To Accompany, Always: Psychological Elements of Palliative Care for the Dying Patient.

Palliative care clinicians provide psychological support throughout their patients' journeys with illness. Throughout our series exploring the psychological elements of palliative care (PEPC), we suggested that the quality of care is enhanced when clinicians have a deeper understanding of patients' psychological experience of serious illness. Palliative care clinicians are uniquely poised to offer patients a grounded, boundaried, and uplifting relationship to chart their own course through a life-altering or terminal illness.

Effect of a Symptom Monitoring Intervention for Patients Hospitalized With Advanced Cancer: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Symptom monitoring interventions are increasingly becoming the standard of care in oncology, but studies assessing these interventions in the hospital setting are lacking.

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a symptom monitoring intervention on symptom burden and health care use among hospitalized patients with advanced cancer.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This nonblinded randomized clinical trial conducted from February 12, 2018, to October 30, 2019, assessed 321 hospitalized adult patients with advanced cancer and admitted to the inpatient oncology services of an academic hospital.

Associations of patient-reported care satisfaction with symptom burden and healthcare use in hospitalized patients with cancer.

Background: Hospitalized patients with cancer often experience a high symptom burden, which may impact care satisfaction and healthcare utilization.

Methods: We prospectively enrolled patients with cancer and unplanned hospitalizations from September 2014 to April 2017. Upon admission, we assessed patients' care satisfaction (FAMCARE items: satisfaction with care coordination and speed with which symptoms are treated) and physical (Edmonton Symptom Assessment System [ESAS]) and psychological (Patient Health Questionnaire-4 [PHQ-4]) symptoms.

Turning the Lens Inward: The Psychological Elements of Clinician Well Being.

This is the seventh entry in the (PEPC) series. Previous articles have focused on the psychological elements of the care we provide patients and the relationships we build with our referring clinician colleagues. In this entry, we focus on how the PEPC also impact clinician well being.

Effects of a perioperative geriatric intervention for older adults with Cancer: A randomized clinical trial.

Background: Older adults with gastrointestinal cancers undergoing surgery often experience poor outcomes, such as prolonged postoperative hospital length of stay (LOS), intensive care unit (ICU) use, hospital readmissions, and complications. Involvement of geriatricians in the care of older adults with cancer can improve outcomes. We conducted a randomized trial of a perioperative geriatric intervention (PERI-OP) in older patients with gastrointestinal cancer undergoing surgery.

Referral Relationship: Illuminating the Ways Palliative Care Creates a Holding Environment for Referring Clinicians.

Palliative care supports referring colleagues in multiples ways. This support to referring colleagues is not often explored in the literature, yet the psychological concept that best describes it is the holding environment. The holding environment is the relational space palliative care offers referring clinicians for processing emotions and information.

(Don't) Leave Me Alone: Attachment in Palliative Care.

This is the fifth article in the psychological elements of palliative care series. This series focuses on how key concepts from psychotherapy can be used in the context of palliative care to improve communication and fine tune palliative care interventions. In this article, we discuss attachment-the system by which people form bonds in relationships.

Defining Clinical Attunement: A Ubiquitous But Undertheorized Aspect of Palliative Care.

Attunement, the process of understanding and responding to another's spoken and unspoken needs, is a fundamental concept of human development and the basis of meaningful relationships. To specialize the concept of attunement for palliative care, this article introduces clinical attunement. This term accounts for how palliative care clinicians must repeatedly balance patients' readiness to talk about the future with the cadence of the illness and need for medical decision making.

Foundations for Psychological Thinking in Palliative Care: Frame and Formulation.

This is the second article in the psychological elements of palliative care (PEPC) series. This series focuses on how key concepts from psychotherapy can be used in the context of palliative care to improve communication and fine tune palliative care interventions. In this article, we introduce two foundational concepts: frame and formulation.

The Meaning of Together: Exploring Transference and Countertransference in Palliative Care Settings.

Establishing an empathic clinical relationship is a cornerstone of high-quality palliative care. More than simply approaching patients with a pleasant affect or "being nice," we propose that skilled clinicians routinely employ distinct psychological elements when creating effective bonds with seriously ill patients and their families. Palliative care involvement has been shown to improve a variety of outcomes for patients with serious cancer, and yet the components of this salutary effect are still becoming known in the literature.

Palliative care and coping in patients with acute myeloid leukemia: Mediation analysis of data from a randomized clinical trial.

Background: It has been shown previously that integrated palliative care for patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) during intensive chemotherapy leads to improvements in quality of life (QOL) and mood. Coping has been shown to mediate palliative care interventions in advanced cancer; the mechanisms by which improvements occur among patients with AML remain unexplained.

Methods: The authors conducted a secondary analysis of data from a multisite randomized trial of integrated palliative and oncology care (IPC; n = 86) versus usual care (n = 74) for hospitalized patients with AML undergoing intensive chemotherapy.

Analyzing the Unique Needs of International Palliative Care Learners Attending a United States-Based Palliative Care Education and Practice Course.

Many seriously ill patients in need of palliative care (PC) globally never receive it, partly due to a lack of well-trained providers. We analyzed feedback from international participants in a U.S.

Palliative care for patients undergoing stem cell transplant: intervention components and supportive care measures.

An inpatient palliative care intervention during HCT led to improvement in patient QOL and mood. We sought to describe components of the intervention, investigate differences in supportive care practices by treatment arm, and explore whether these differences mediated the impact of the intervention on patient QOL and mood. We conducted a secondary analysis of a randomized trial investigating inpatient palliative care integrated with transplant care versus standard transplant care for HCT recipients.

Patient-Reported and End-of-Life Outcomes Among Adults With Lung Cancer Receiving Targeted Therapy in a Clinical Trial of Early Integrated Palliative Care: A Secondary Analysis.

Context: Targeted therapy has revolutionized lung cancer treatment and markedly increased survival, though data are lacking on patient-reported and end-of-life (EOL) outcomes among patients receiving targeted therapy.

Objectives: This study aimed to compare quality of life (QOL), symptoms, prognostic communication, and EOL care between patients receiving targeted therapy and patients with lung cancer without targetable mutations.

Methods: In this secondary analysis of a randomized trial of early palliative care in advanced lung cancer (n=154), we compared change in QOL and symptoms (per the Functional Assessment of Cancer Treatment [FACT]-Lung scale) over 24 weeks among patients with lung cancer receiving targeted therapy versus those without targetable mutations using linear mixed effects models, adjusted for receipt of palliative care, age and gender.

Effectiveness of Integrated Palliative and Oncology Care for Patients With Acute Myeloid Leukemia: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) receiving intensive chemotherapy experience substantial decline in their quality of life (QOL) and mood during their hospitalization for induction chemotherapy and often receive aggressive care at the end of life (EOL). However, the role of specialty palliative care for improving the QOL and care for this population is currently unknown.

Objective: To assess the effect of integrated palliative and oncology care (IPC) on patient-reported and EOL outcomes in patients with AML.