Virtual models of care for people with palliative care needs living in their own home: A systematic meta-review and narrative synthesis.

Background: Access to palliative care in the community enables people to live in their preferred place of care, which is often home. Community palliative care services struggle to provide timely 24-h services to patients and family. This has resulted in calls for ‘accessible and flexible’ models of care that are ‘responsive’ to peoples’ changing palliative care needs. Digital health technologies provide opportunities to meet these requirements 24-h a day. Aim: To identify digital health technologies that have been evaluated for supporting timely assessment and management of people living at home with palliative care needs and/or their carer(s), and the evidence-base for each. Design: A systematic review of systematic reviews (‘meta-review’). Systematic reviews evaluating evidence for virtual models of palliative or end-of-life care using one or more digital health technologies were included. Systematic reviews were evaluated using the Risk of Bias Tool for Systematic Reviews. A narrative approach was used to synthesise results. Data sources:Medline, Embase, Web of Science, CINAHL and Cochrane Database of systematic reviews were searched for English-language reviews published between 2015 and 2020. Results: The search yielded 2266 articles, of which 12 systematic reviews met criteria. Sixteen reviews were included in total, after four reviews were found via handsearching. Other than scheduled telehealth, video-conferencing, or after-hours telephone support, little evidence was found for digital health technologies used to deliver virtual models of palliative care. Conclusions: There are opportunities to test new models of virtual care, beyond telehealth and/or video conferencing, such as 24-h command centres, and rapid response teams

Thinking globally to improve care locally : A Delphi study protocol to achieve international clinical consensus on best-practice end-of-life communication with adolescents and young adults with cancer

For the sizeable subset of adolescents and young adults whose cancer is incurable, developmentally appropriate end-of-life discussions are critical. Standards of care for adolescent and young adult end-of-life communication have been established, however, many health-professionals do not feel confident leading these conversations, leaving gaps in the implementation of best-practice end-of-life communication. We present a protocol for a Delphi study informing the development and implementation of clinician training to strengthen health-professionals’ capacity in end-of-life conversations. Our approach will inform training to address barriers to end-of-life communication with adolescents and young adults across Westernized Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Global Accord countries. The Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Global Accord team involves 26 investigators from Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Twenty-four consumers, including adolescents and young adults with cancer history and carers, informed study design. We describe methodology for a modified Delphi questionnaire. The questionnaire aims to determine optimal timing for end-of-life communication with adolescents and young adults, practice-related content needed in clinician training for end-of-life communication with adolescents and young adults, and desireability of evidence-based training models. Round 1 involves an expert panel of investigators identifying appropriate questionnaire items. Rounds 2 and 3 involve questionnaires of international multidisciplinary health-professionals, followed by further input by adolescents and young adults. A second stage of research will design health-professional training to support best-practice end-of-life communication. The outcomes of this iterative and participatory research will directly inform the implementation of best-practice end-of-life communication across Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Global Accord countries. Barriers and training preferences identified will directly contribute to developing clinician-training resources. Our results will provide a framework to support further investigating end-of-life communication with adolescents and young adults across diverse countries. Our experiences also highlight effective methodology in undertaking highly collaborative global research.</p