Validity and reliability of the English and translated Chinese versions of the Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale (IPOS) in Singapore.

Context: Measurement of patient-centred outcomes enables clinicians to focus on patient and family priorities and enables quality of palliative care to be assessed.

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the validity and reliability of the English and translated Chinese versions of the Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale (IPOS) among advanced cancer patients in Singapore.

Methods: IPOS was forward and backward translated from English into Chinese.

Family Caregiver Support of Patient Self-Management During Chronic, Life-Limiting Illness: A Qualitative Metasynthesis.

Family caregivers play an integral role in supporting patient self-management, yet how they perform this role is unclear. We conducted a qualitative metasynthesis of family caregivers' processes to support patient self-management of chronic, life-limiting illness and factors affecting their support. Methods included a systematic literature search, quality appraisal of articles, data abstraction, and data synthesis to produce novel themes.

Offset analgesia is reduced on the palm and increases with stimulus duration.

Background: A noxious stimulus following a more intense stimulus often feels less painful than continuous noxious stimulation. This effect, known as offset analgesia (OA), may be due to descending inhibitory control, to changes in peripheral neural transmission or both. The timing and location of noxious thermal stimulation were manipulated to better understand the peripheral and central contributions to OA.

Stepwise increasing sequential offsets cannot be used to deliver high thermal intensities with little or no perception of pain.

Offset analgesia (OA) is the disproportionate decrease in pain experience following a slight decrease in noxious heat stimulus intensity. We tested whether sequential offsets would allow noxious temperatures to be reached with little or no perception of pain. Forty-eight participants continuously rated their pain experience during trials containing trains of heat stimuli delivered by Peltier thermode.