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How do professionals assess the quality of life of children with advanced cancer receiving palliative care, and what are their recommendations for improvement?

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Palliative Care, May 2018
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (77th percentile)
  • Average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source

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1 blog
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158 Mendeley
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Title
How do professionals assess the quality of life of children with advanced cancer receiving palliative care, and what are their recommendations for improvement?
Published in
BMC Palliative Care, May 2018
DOI 10.1186/s12904-018-0328-y
Pubmed ID
Authors

Josianne Avoine-Blondin, Véronique Parent, Léonor Fasse, Clémentine Lopez, Nago Humbert, Michel Duval, Serge Sultan

Abstract

It is known that information regarding the quality of life of a patient is central to pediatric palliative care. This information allows professionals to adapt the care and support provided to children and their families. Previous studies have documented the major areas to be investigated in order to assess the quality of life, although it is not yet known what operational criteria or piece of information should be used in the context of pediatric palliative care. The present study aims to: 1) Identify signs of quality of life and evaluation methods currently used by professionals to assess the quality of life of children with cancer receiving palliative care. 2) Collect recommendations from professionals to improve the evaluation of quality of life in this context. We selected a qualitative research design and applied an inductive thematic content analysis to the verbal material. Participants included 20 members of the Department of Hematology-Oncology at CHU Sainte-Justine from various professions (e.g. physicians, nurses, psychosocial staff) who had cared for at least one child with cancer receiving palliative care in the last year. Professionals did not have access to pre-established criteria or to a defined procedure to assess the quality of life of children they followed in the context of PPC. They reported basing their assessment on the child's non-verbal cues, relational availability and elements of his/her environment. These cues are typically collected through observation, interpretation and by asking the child, his/her parents, and other members of the care. To improve the assessment of quality of life professionals recommended optimizing interdisciplinary communication, involving the child and the family in the evaluation process, increasing training to palliative care in hematology/oncology, and developing formalized measurement tools. The formulation of explicit criteria to assess the quality of life in this context, along with detailed recommendations provided by professionals, support the development of systematic measurement strategy. Such a strategy would contribute to the development of common care goals and further facilitate communication between professionals and with the family.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 4 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 158 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 158 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 23 15%
Student > Ph. D. Student 17 11%
Student > Bachelor 16 10%
Researcher 14 9%
Student > Doctoral Student 5 3%
Other 16 10%
Unknown 67 42%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Nursing and Health Professions 33 21%
Medicine and Dentistry 24 15%
Psychology 11 7%
Social Sciences 4 3%
Sports and Recreations 3 2%
Other 11 7%
Unknown 72 46%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 9. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 October 2018.
All research outputs
#3,652,465
of 23,047,237 outputs
Outputs from BMC Palliative Care
#451
of 1,257 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#71,940
of 327,709 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Palliative Care
#24
of 36 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,047,237 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 84th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,257 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 63% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 327,709 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 77% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 36 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 30th percentile – i.e., 30% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.