Literature Review

Palliative care across the spectrum of heart failure JACC Heart Fail;  y Laura P Gelfman, Moritz Blum, Modele O Ogunniyi, Colleen K McIlvennan, Dio Kavalieratos , Larry A Allen; online ahead of print 2/27/24; print 3/8/24 Persons with heart failure (HF) often suffer from poor symptom control, decreased quality of life, and poor communication with their health care providers. ... New models are required that are better informed by high-quality data, engage a range of health care providers in primary palliative care principles, and have clear triggers for specialty palliative care engagement, with specific palliative interventions tailored to patient's illness trajectory and changing needs.

Editorial: Illness trajectories in the age of big data The BMJ; by Peter Tanuseputro, Colleen Webber, and James Downar; 3/1/24For decades, healthcare providers have understood that patients follow typical trajectories of health decline as they approach the end of life, and they have used this understanding to help patients and families anticipate the dying process. Traditional trajectories focus on function or overall health status and include sudden death, terminal illness ..., organ failure ..., and frailty ... Two Education articles in the BMJ add novel dimensions to our understanding of health decline. Murray et al explain how declines in function do not always mirror declines in social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. They also add a new trajectory, multimorbidity, to describe a person with conditions from multiple trajectories (such as heart disease from organ failure and cognitive impairment from frailty).

"The great escape": How an incident of elopement gave rise to trauma informed palliative care for a patient experiencing multiple disadvantage BMC Palliat Care, by Sam Quinn, Libby Ferguson, Derek Read, and Naomi Richards; 2/28/24Background: This case report ... illustrates how unresolved traumatic experiences across the life course can affect a patient's engagement with palliative care and offers insights into the flexibility and adaptations necessary for taking a trauma informed approach to care for an individual experiencing multiple disadvantage. 

NIA is leading efforts to coordinate NIH palliative care researchNational Institute on Aging, by Chandra Keller and Alexis Bakos; 2/28/24

Experiences of nursing students providing end of life care for children and young people: A focus group study Elsevier, by Clair Camara, Leah Rosengarten and Jane Callum; 2/27/24This study aims to help improve understanding of the lived experiences of children's nursing students who have cared for a patient at, during, or immediately following end-of-life. The study describes the emotions experienced by children's nursing students and explores the student nurses' perceptions of education and support needs around caring for [Children and Young People] CYP during end-of-life care.

The impact of early palliative care interventions on the utilization of medical care resources for end-of-life patientsResearch Square (not peer reviewed; under review by BMC Palliative Care), by Chia-Chia Lin, Tsing-Fen Ho, Chang-Hung Lin, Nu-Man Tsai Tsai, Yu-Hung Kuo, Ju-Huei Chien; 2/12/24(Taiwan) Patients at the end-of-life who received palliative care experienced a reduced incidence of aggressive medical interventions before death. These encompassed activities such as stays in the intensive care unit, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, endotracheal intubation, respiratory ventilator support, and blood transfusions.

Leadership core competencies in palliative care — Recommendations from the European Association for Palliative Care: Delphi StudyJournal of Palliative Medicine, by Olivia Parczyk, Gerrit Frerich, Martin Loučka, Raymond Voltz, Sheila Payne; 2/14/24The eight domains [of leadership: research, advocacy and media, communication, teamwork, project management, organizational learning and sustainability, leading change, and personal traits] provide evidence for teaching of leadership competencies in palliative care. We recommend that exploring, identifying, and integrating leadership competencies in palliative care are given more attention in educational curricula and in training interventions.

Racial differences in hospice care outcomes among patients with advanced heart failure: Systematic review and meta-analysisAm J Cardiol, by Diego Chambergo-Michilot, Victor G Becerra-Gonzales, Veraprapas Kittipibul, Rosario Colombo, Katia Bravo-Jaimes; 2/19/24There remains a paucity of investigational data about disparities in hospice services among people with non-cancer diagnoses, specifically in heart failure. Black patients with advanced heart failure have been disproportionally affected by health care services inequities but their outcomes after hospice enrollment are not well studied. We aimed to describe race-specific outcomes in patients with advanced heart failure who were enrolled in hospice services.

The role of bioethics services in paediatric intensive care units: A qualitative descriptive studyBMC Medical Ethics, by Denise Alexander, Mary Quirke, Jo Greene, Lorna Cassidy, Carol Hilliard, and Maria Brenner; 2/19/24Results: From 33 interviews, we identified four themes that described the functionality of bioethics services when a child requires technology to sustain life: striving for consensus; the importance of guidelines; a structure that facilitates a time-sensitive and relevant response; and strong leadership and teamwork.

Palliative care doctor: What dying feels like Mind Matters, by Denyse O'Leary; 2/15/24What does dying actually feel like? Most human beings have always believed that the essence of a human being survives the death of the body though the outcome is envisioned in a variety of ways. But, assuming that pain and distress are controlled, what does dying actually feel like? Can science tell us anything about that? 

Tier - Palliative Care: A population-based care delivery model to match evolving patient needs to palliative care services for community-based patients with heart failure or cancer [This link goes to the more detailed National Institutes of Health (NIH) description of this clinical trial.]Genomics & Genetics Daily, by a news reporter-staff news editor; 2/14/24Staff editors report on the newly launched clinical trial, NCT06228209, which has the following summary description: "TIER-PC is an adaptive model of delivering palliative care that provides the right level of care to the right patients at the right time. It represents an adaption of the Mount Sinai PALLIATIVE CARE AT HOME (PC@H) program, which delivers home-based palliative care. TIER-PC increases the number and intensity of disciplines added to the patient's care team as their symptoms worsen and function declines."

Large study ties OCD to greater risk of death from any causeJAMA, by Emily Harris; 2/7/24Previous research on the mortality risk of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has shown mixed results and hasn’t gone into specific causes of death. Now, results from a large cohort study published in The BMJ suggests they have an 82% higher risk of dying from all causes.