Effectiveness of using clinical guidelines for conducting palliative care family meetings in Japan

Abstract

In accordance with the study aims, we were able to demonstrate the utility of a questionnaire as an essential tool to plan and conduct effective communication between health professionals and primary family carers in Japanese cancer patients. This pilot test should be followed up with a larger sample and a controlled trial.

Do Family Meetings Improve Measurable Outcomes for Patients, Carers, or Health Systems? A Systematic Review

“…Of the articles included for review, two studies randomised patients to intervention and control groups (Bokinskie, 1992;O'Farrell, Murphy, Alter, & Fals-Stewart, 2008), although both had small sample sizes and one gave minimal information about the randomisation procedure (Bokinskie, 1992). The remaining studies included three single group pre and post trials (Fukui et al, 2013;Hannon et al, 2012;Hudson et al, 2009), two observational cohort studies (Hughes, Joyce, & Staley, 1987;Olfson et al, 1999) and one satisfaction survey (Sundararajan, Sullivan, & Chapman, 2012). Several of the papers also had small sample sizes and insufficient power to detect significant results.…”

“…The structure and content of the meetings were not described, however the same clinical guidelines developed and utilised by Hudson et al (2009) for conducting family meetings were also used by Fukui et al (2013). The meetings were facilitated by a range of healthcare professionals, including social workers (Hannon et al, 2012), nurses (Hudson et al, 2009;Bokinskie, 1992), doctors (Fukui et al, 2013), social workers or doctors (Sundararajan et al, 2012), and counsellors (O'Farrell et al, 2008). Two of the studies (Olfson et al, 1999;Hughes et al, 1987) did not state the profession of the facilitator.…”

“…Family meetings generally require a significant allocation of clinician time (Hannon, O'Reilly, Bennett, Breen, & Lawlor, 2012) and it can be difficult to coordinate multiple professionals and family members. Fukui et al (2013) also identified time as a limitation for oncologists conducting family meetings, noting that in the context of busy clinical practice they may be able to answer patients' questions about their medical condition and treatment plan, but that there is often insufficient time to address carers' emotions.…”

Family Conferences in Palliative Care: A Survey of Health Care Providers in France

“…In this study, 99% of palliative care IDT members report conducting family conferences [13,18,19,23,[25][26][27][28][29].…”

“…Hudson et al proposed that clinical practice guidelines be established as a means of improving family conferences in the palliative care setting [18]. Preliminary studies conducted in other countries testing these guidelines have revealed improvements in health care provider meetings and in satisfying patients' and family members' information needs [19,29]. Future research should incorporate these guidelines, as well as assess their effectiveness in the palliative care patient population in France in order to determine whether these guidelines are equally beneficial.…”