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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Residents' management of the symptoms associated with terminal cancer | | Author(s) | Paul A Sloan, Michael B Donnelly, Richard W Schwartz |
| Journal title | The Hospice Journal, vol 12, no 3, 1997 |
| Pages | pp 5-16 |
| Source | Haworth Document Delivery Center, The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA. |
| Keywords | Cancer ; Diagnosis ; Terminal care ; Drugs ; Doctors ; Performance ; Evaluation ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | This US study used performance-based testing to evaluate the skills of resident physicians (i.e. house doctors in hospitals) in managing four clinical symptoms of a patient with advanced cancer: nausea and vomiting associated with regular morphine use; lack of appetite in the last weeks of life of a terminally ill patient; constipation associated with codeine analgesia; and dyspnoea associated with diffuse lung metastases. The management plan for the symptom problems was evaluated using a pre-defined checklist. A significant number of the physicians showed deficits in managing common symptoms of advanced cancer. Scheduled dosing of anti-emetics was infrequently prescribed for opioid-related nausea and vomiting. Most physicians inappropriately managed lack of appetite by using forced feeding. Opioids were infrequently used in the management of terminal dyspnoea. The absence of difference in score between junior and senior physicians suggests that adequate management of the symptoms of terminal cancer is not being effectively taught in postgraduate training programmes. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-971209219 B |
| Classmark | CK: LK7: LV: LLD: QT2: 5H: 4C: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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