This episode features Deidre Morgan (Palliative and Supportive Services, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia). Functional decline can be anticipated for people with life-limiting illnesses. Trajectories of functional decline differ in shapes and patterns. Understanding patterns of functional decl ...…

This episode features Katrin Gerber ( National Ageing Research Institute & Queensland University of Technology). Research suggests that people generally would like to receive their end of life care at home. This study aimed to examine the decision making process of how preferences are formed. This qualitative study involved interviews of 9 term ...…

This episode features Sarah Combes (Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care, King's College London, UK). Older people living with frailty are projected to become one of the largest future users of palliative care. Advance care planning can improve person centred end of life care. However advance care planning is rel ...…

This episode features Dr Bella Vivat (Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, UCL, London, UK) and Professor Paddy Stone (Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, UCL, London, UK). Sedative medication may be used to manage intractable symptoms at the end of patients’ lives. No UK guidelines specifically address the detail of ho ...…

This episode features Dr Catriona Mayland (University of Sheffield, UK). The Quality of Death Index showed variability in the international provision of care for the dying. In order to improve care, we need to have validated outcome measures to assess the current quality of care. One method of evaluation is to use the views from the bereaved re ...…

This episode features Dr Ann Dadich (Western Sydney University, Austrailia) Specialist home-based palliative care can improve symptom management and quality of life and prevent hospitalisation at the end-of-life. There is significant variation in how home-based palliative care is delivered, even within similar jurisdictions. The clinical practi ...…

This episode features Dr Simon Etkind (Cicely Saunders Institute, King’s College London, London, UK). To be person-centred, care should take into account individual preferences. Some influences on care preferences in older people have been described. These include the family and care context, individual response and illness-related factors. Old ...…

This episode features Dr Huw Williams ( Cardiff University, UK) Around 2% –3 % of consultations in primary care are prone to patient safety incidents. Patients receiving palliative care are not immune to patient safety concerns. ‘Out-of-hours’ services are responsible for providing care for two-thirds of the working week (18:30 to 08:00 on week ...…

This episode features Dr Sophie Rees ( University of Warwick, Coventry, UK ) and Dr Ann Hutchinson ( University of Hull, Hull, UK ) Cancer patients are at an increased risk of thrombosis. Current guidance for treatment is injected anticoagulants although there is some doubt as to the long-term acceptability of injections to patients. Many cance ...…

This episode features Dr Alex Chan (Department of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA). Routine assessment of many established quality indicators is nearly impossible because the information is embedded as unstructured free text within electronic clinical notes. A key example of this is timely doc ...…

This episode features Dr Hazel Coop and Dr Clare Marlow (WM CARES (West Midlands Collaborative Actioning Research in End of life and Supportive care), New Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton, UK). This regional survey aimed to determine whether palliative care professionals in the West Midlands (United Kingdom) have discussions about digital legacy w ...…

This episode features Dr Cathy Payne (Institute of Nursing and Health Research, Ulster University, Newtownabbey, UK). This qualitative study aimed to explore the experiences and perceptions of patients and healthcare professionals on the feasibility and acceptability of palliative rehabilitation during advanced lung cancer treatment. The result ...…

This episode features Dr Karen Neoh (St Gemma’s Academic Unit of Palliative Care, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK). This national audit aimed to determine national transfusion practice in hospices and compare this against National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and British Society of Haematology guidelines to develop recommendations to ...…

This episode features Professor Mari Lloyd Williams (Academic Palliative and Supportive Care Studies Group, Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK). This was a pilot trial to determine the effect of a focused narrative intervention on depression in palliative care patients when used in addition to us ...…

This episode features Marc Sampedro Pilegaard (The Research Initiative of Activity Studies and Occupational Therapy, Research Unit of General Practice, Department of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark). This randomised controlled trial aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the ‘Cancer Home Life-Intervention’ compared wit ...…

This episode features Matthew Allsop (St Gemma’s Academic Unit of Palliative Care, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK). This retrospective cohort study aimed to identify patient and organisational factors that influence the duration of hospice-based palliative care in the United Kingdom prior to death. The result ...…

This episode features Professor David Currow (University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia. Wolfson Palliative Care Research Centre, University of Hull, Hull, UK). This transnational online survey aimed to determine the impact of a phase III randomised controlled trial on palliative care clinicians’ self-reported practice change. The ...…

This episode features Dr Karen Neoh (St Gemma's Academic Unit of Palliative Care). This is the first study to interview hospice inpatients to explore their views about the corneal donation. The study found that patients are willing to discuss donation and further exploration of patients views should be undertaken. Full paper available from: No ...…

This episode features Merryn Gott (School of Nursing, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand). The aim of this study was to explore the role of community at end of life for people dying in advanced age from the perspective of their bereaved family caregivers. The study used a constructionist framework underpinned a qualitative resear ...…

This episode features Professor Miriam Johnson (Director, Wolfson Palliative Care Research Centre, Hull York Medical School). The aim of this study was to: establish cardiology led palliative care versus usual care was feasible, to assess quality of data capture, to facilitate future sample size calculation and to assess survival. Study design ...…

This episode features Rachel Depner (Palliative Care Institute, The Center for Hospice & Palliative Care, New York, USA). She reports on her study which aimed to (a) describe a prison-based end-of-life program utilizing inmate peer caregivers, (b) identify inmate-caregiver motivations for participation, and (c) analyze the role of building trus ...…

This episode features Professor Gunn Grande (University of Manchester, Manchester, UK). The aim of this qualitative study was to explore whether and how family carers are currently supported during patient discharge at end of life; to assess perceived benefits, acceptability and feasibility of using The Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNA ...…

This episode features Dr. Mariona Guerrero (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain). She reports on her systematic review which aimed to identify meaning in life interventions implemented in patients with advanced disease and to describe their context, mechanisms and outcomes. The study was a Systematic review of four electron ...…

This episode features Anna Bone (Cicely Saunders Institute of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, King’s College London). This study aimed to project where people will die from 2015 to 2040 across all care settings in England and Wales. The study was a population-based trend analysis and projections using simple linear modelling. All de ...…

This episode features Briony Hudson (Louis Dundas Centre for Children’s Palliative Care, UCL Institute of Child Health, London, UK and Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, UCL Division of Psychiatry, London, UK) and Linda Oostendorp, (Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, UCL Division of Psychiatry, London, UK). They desc ...…

This episode features Wendy Duggleby (University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada) who describes a study which aimed to (a) explore the transition experience of family caregivers caring for persons with advanced cancer living in the community, (b) describe potential triggers for transitions, (c) identify what influences this experience, and (d) dev ...…

This episode features Claudia Virdun (Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Ultimo, NSW, Australia) who describes a study which aimed to gain a richer and deeper understanding of elements of end-of-life care that consumers consider most important within the hospital setting. The study was a meta-synthesis (review of all the ...…

This episode features Suresh Kumar Chhetri (Preston MND Care and Research Centre, Department of Neurology, Royal Preston Hospital, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Preston, UK) who describes a study which aimed to explore patients' experience of enteral feeding and its impact on quality of life. The study was a questionnaire ...…

This episode features Professor Matthew Allsop (Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK) who describes a study that outlined and applied an evaluation framework to examine how and when electronic documentation of advance care planning is occurring in end of life care services. The study extracted data from electronic ...…

This episode features Professor Liz Forbat (Australian Catholic University, Canberra, ACT, Australia) and Rachel Bilton-Simek (Calvary Public Hospital Bruce, Canberra, ACT, Australia). Together they describe a Single-arm mixed-method feasibility proof-of-concept trial which aimed to design and test an innovative distance-learning educational pa ...…

This episode features the work of Philippa Cahill et al (School of Medicine, The University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia) who describes a systematic review that examines the evidence supporting family meetings as a strategy to address the needs of palliative patients and their families. The authors found that there was low-le ...…

This episode features the work of Professor David Currow et al (Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia) who describes a study which aimed to compare characteristics, expressed unmet needs and outcomes for spousal caregivers, with other caregivers at the end of life, by gender and age. The study used data from The South Australian Health O ...…

This episode features the work of Dr Eliza M Park et al (Department of Psychiatry, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA) who describes a study which aimed to describe the experience of living with advanced cancer as a parent, including illness experience, parental concerns, and treatment decision making and to e ...…

This episode features the work of Dr Hilde Buiting et al (Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam and Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation (IKNL), Utrecht) who conducted a medical record review of patients selected selected patients from the nationwide Netherlands Cancer Registry. The aim of the study was to explore the content of medi ...…

This episode features the work of Dr Peter Tanuseputro et al (Bruyère Research Institute and Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa, ON, Canada) who conducted a retrospective population-level cohort study, describing palliative care in the last year of life using linked health administrative databases which the aim to provide a population p ...…

This episode features the work of Dr Alze Tavares et al (Hospital Paulistano, Sao Paulo, Brazil) who conducted a study which aimed to implement a patient-centred outcome measure in daily practice, in order to fulfil one quality indicator, which is to improve pain during the 72 hours after admission, in at least 75% of patients.. Full paper from ...…

In this episode Dr James Downar (University of Toronto, Canada) presents a study which aimed to determine whether standardized patient simulation offers benefit over didactic sessions alone for improving skill and comfort discussing goals of care of first-year internal medicine residents. Full paper from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10 ...…

In this episode Professor Robin Cohen (Departments of Oncology and Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada) presents a study which aimed to revise the McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire (McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire–Revised) while maintaining or improving its psychometric properties and length, keeping it as close as possibl ...…

In this episode Simon Noah Etkind (King’s College London, Cicely Saunders Institute, Department of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, London, UK) presents the results of a secondary thematic analysis of interviews study. The study aimed to understand patient experiences of uncertainty in advanced illness and subsequently develop a typo ...…

In this episode Dr Alastair Canaway (Warwick Clinical Trials Unit, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick) presents the findings of study which aimed to develop an outcome measure suitable for use in economic evaluation that captures the benefits of end-of-life care to those close to the dying. Full paper from: http://journals.sagepub.co ...…

In this episode Yolanda Penders (End-of-Life Care Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Ghent University, Brussels, Belgium) presents a study which aimed to investigate the self-reported out-of-pocket costs associated with healthcare in the last year of life of older adults in Europe. Full paper from:http://pmj.sagepub.com/conten ...…

In this episode Camilla Zimmermann (University of Toronto) presents the findings of qualitative study which aimed to determine, from a participant perspective, the experience of receiving early palliative care and elements of that care. Full paper from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269216316649126…

In this episode Professor Myra Bluebond-Langner (Louis Dundas Centre for Children’s Palliative Care) discusses the challenges faced by researchers aiming to recruit children and young people (CYP) with life-limiting conditions (LLCs) or life-threatening illnesses (LTIs) to research studies. For the full paper: http://pmj.sagepub.com/content/30/ ...…

In this episode Dr Richard Harding (Kings College London) presents a study of drug-susceptible and drug-resistant tuberculosis. Specifically the study aimed to (1) identify most burdensome problems, (2) compare intensity of problems for drug-susceptible and drug-resistant tuberculosis and (3) identify predictors of problem identifiers. Full pap ...…

Patient and caregiver perspectives on managing pain in advanced cancer In this episode Mary Godfrey (University of Leeds) discusses the knowledge gap in the literature between the conception of pain as complex, and the processes of how patients with cancer understand and experience pain. She outlines her qualitative longitudinal study, which in ...…