The experience of Australian aged care workers during a trial implementation of a palliative care outcomes programme.

End of life care is an essential part of the role of Australian aged care homes (ACHs). However, there is no national framework to support aged care staff in systematically identifying residents with palliative care needs or to routinely assess, respond to, and measure end of life needs. The Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC) is a national outcomes and benchmarking programme which aims to systematically improve palliative care for people who are approaching the end of life, and for their families and carers.

Appetite-Related Distress Is Burdensome in the Last Sixty Days of Life of People Receiving Palliative Care: A National Longitudinal Consecutive Cohort Study.

People with life-limiting illnesses experience a range of distressing symptoms. Appetite-related symptoms are common, but studies have found varied prevalence and the distress caused has had limited quantification. To examine the clinicodemographic factors and trajectory of appetite-related distress in the last 60 days of life.

Sleeping-related distress in a palliative care population: A national, prospective, consecutive cohort.

Background: Sleep, a multi-dimensional experience, is essential for optimal physical and mental wellbeing. Poor sleep is associated with worse wellbeing but data are scarce from multi-site studies on sleeping-related distress in palliative care populations.

Aim: To evaluate patient-reported distress related to sleep and explore key demographic and symptom distress related to pain, breathing or fatigue.

The impact of the mode of survey administration on estimates of daily smoking for mobile phone only users.

Background: Over the past decade, there have been substantial changes in landline and mobile phone ownership, with a substantial increase in the proportion of mobile-only households. Estimates of daily smoking rates for the mobile phone only (MPO) population have been found to be substantially higher than the rest of the population and telephone surveys that use a dual sampling frame (landline and mobile phones) are now considered best practice. Smoking is seen as an undesirable behaviour; measuring such behaviours using an interviewer may lead to lower estimates when using telephone based surveys compared to self-administered approaches.

The SF-36v2 and SF-12v2 health surveys in New Zealand: norms, scoring coefficients and cross-country comparisons.

Objective: To provide New Zealand population norms for version 2 of the SF-36 and SF-12 health surveys and report scoring coefficients that enable the construction of Physical and Mental Component Summary scores from New Zealand SF-36v2 and SF-12v2 data.

Approach: Norms for the SF-36v2 and scoring coefficients for the Physical and Mental Component Summary scores are estimated using 2006/07 New Zealand Health Survey data, which included 12,488 adults (aged 15 years and over). Norms for the SF-12v2 are derived from 2008 New Zealand General Social Survey data, including 8,721 adults.