Palliative Care Skills and New Resources for Oncology Practices: Meeting the Palliative Care Needs of Patients With Cancer and Their Families.

In its 2017 guideline, ASCO challenged members to integrate palliative care into their standard oncology practices for all patients, throughout their cancer trajectory. However, partnering with palliative care experts alone will not be enough to achieve that goal; there are too few experts now, and there will not be enough in the future to meet the needs of patients with cancer and their families. Other strategies are required. Oncologists can develop new communication skills that were not included in their fellowship curricula, skills that integrate into their visits the subjects that palliative care clinicians discuss routinely with patients referred to them. In this review, Dr. Back offers three questions matched to communication skills that can help oncologists explore key areas: (1) What is happening? (2) How do you (and I) feel? and (3) What is important? and discusses the "REMAP" strategy for making urgent medical decisions. Dr. Friedman reviews the impact of community-based palliative care resources and telehealth on care quality, patient centeredness, and reducing costs. Community-based palliative care services and telehealth are available to patients and families at home, during active treatment. Dr. Abrahm reviews how patient-reported outcomes (PROs) completed at home can enhance patients' symptom control, quality of life, and toleration of treatment and decrease unplanned emergency visits by alerting clinicians to patients' severe symptoms, making appropriate referrals, or suggesting patients contact their oncology team. She also provides an update on using PROs and natural language processing with clinical decision support to create sophisticated palliative care assessments and treatment options in the electronic health record during patients' office visits.

Integrating Palliative Care into Critical Care: A Quality Improvement Study.

BACKGROUND: Many terminally ill patients experience an increasing intensity of medical care, an escalation frequently not consistent with their preferences. In 2009, formal palliative care consultation (PCC) was integrated into our medical intensive care unit (ICU). We hypothesized that significant differences in clinical and economic outcomes exist between ICU patients who received PCC and those who did not. METHODS: We reviewed ICU admissions between July and October 2010, identified 41 patients who received PCC, and randomly selected 80 patients who did not. We measured clinical outcomes and economic variables associated with patients' ICU courses. RESULTS: Patients in the PCC group were older (average 64 years, standard deviation [SD] 19.2 vs 55.6 years, SD 14.5; P = .021) and sicker (median Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation IV score 85.5, interquartile range [IQR] 60.5-107.5 vs 60, IQR 39.2-74.75; P < .001) than the non-PCC controls. PCC patients received significantly more total days of ICU care on average (8 days, IQR 4-15 vs 4 days, IQR 2-7; P < .001), had more ICU admissions, and were more likely to die during their ICU stay (64.3% vs 12.5%, P < .001). Median total hospital charges per patient attributable to ICU care were higher in the PCC group than in the controls (US$315,493, IQR US$156,470-US$486,740 vs US$116,934, IQR US$54,750-US$288,660; P < .001). After we adjusted for ICU length of stay, we found that median ICU charges per day per patient did not differ significantly between the groups (US$37,463, IQR US$27,429-US$56,230 vs US$41,332, IQR US$30,149-US$63,288; P = .884). Median time to PCC during the ICU stay was 7 days (IQR 2-14.5 days). CONCLUSIONS: Patients who received PCC had higher disease acuity, longer ICU lengths of stay, and higher ICU mortality than controls. "Trigger" programs in the ICU may improve utilization of PCC services, improve patient comfort, and reduce invasive, often futile end-of-life care.

When death precedes birth: experience of a palliative care team on a labor and delivery unit.

BACKGROUND: With increasing recognition and availability of palliative care, interdisciplinary palliative care teams continue to discover novel opportunities to enhance patient-centered care and improve hospital staff satisfaction. As a new palliative care consultation service in a large urban academic tertiary care setting, we found unanticipated palliative care needs on the labor and delivery unit. Women experiencing sudden intrauterine death, and the health care providers who care for them, have unique palliative care needs. CONCLUSION: In some circumstances an interdisciplinary palliative care team, may help to address acute grief and provide ongoing staff support. Case examples of our palliative care team's experience are instructive.