Jul 3, 2017
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-level evidence to support
family meetings. Only two quantitative pre- and post-studies
used a validated palliative care family outcome measure with
both studies reporting significant results
post-family meetings. Four other quantitative studies reported
significant results using non-validated measures.
In conclusion the findings demonstrates that there is a paucity of
evidence to support family meetings in the inpatient
palliative care setting. Further research using more robust
designs, validated outcome measures, and an economic analysis are
required to build the family meeting evidence before they are
routinely adopted into clinical practice. Full paper
available from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi10.1177/0269216316658833