In adult patients with cancer pain (p), what is the significance of receiving palliative care from the palliative care team (i) when compared to conventional care practice (c) in terms of pain intensity reduction and improved pain management (o) during their course of care (T)?
During the search, I used such terms as Palliative Care and Pain Management. I also used such a MeSH qualifier as “cancer patients.” Both types of terms were useful in finding relevant research papers. The combination of three terms was not enough to establish appropriate search barriers and find all relevant articles. To modify the search, I included the heading Palliative Care Team, and the outcomes were more successful. During two phases of source searching, I found three appropriate recent papers. To locate them, I used PubMed and NIH databases.
All articles represent similar types of evidence. For instance, the papers by Wilkie and Ezenwa (2012), Satija et al. (2014) provide evidence from systematic reviews of quantitative and qualitative research papers (Level V). However, in their paper, Howie and Peppercorn (2013) make focus one particular study in the area of palliative care and pain management, i.e., Early palliative care for patients with metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer by Temel et al., and discuss implications for clinical practice mainly based on the findings from this research and other randomized clinical trials. Thus, it represents the Level I evidence.
Overall, it is possible to say that there is a sufficient amount of evidence on the selected topic. However, many of the studies are outdated, and it is difficult to locate a source that includes all the mentioned keywords and MeSH terms and provides primary, empirical evidence at the same time. It is possible to say that this issue may be related to incorrect use of keywords. Fain (2017) suggests using concept maps to expand keywords − the given method helps to understand associations between similar terms and phrases and think up new appropriate words. Additionally, it is possible to say that the analysis of the evidence of different levels obtained by using both qualitative and quantitative tools can be beneficial for the research outcomes. Thus, it can be recommended to expand the search area and include other credible databases such as EBSCO, ProQuest, etc. into the investigation portfolio.
References
Fain, J. A. (2017). Reading, understanding, and applying nursing research. Philadelphia, PA: F. A. Davis Company. Web.
Howie, L., & Peppercorn, J. (2013). Early palliative care in cancer treatment: Rationale, evidence and clinical implications. Therapeutic Advances in Medical Oncology, 5(6), 318-323. Web.
Satija, A., Ahmed, S. M., Gupta, R., Ahmed, A., Rana, S. P. S., Singh, S. P., … Bhatnagar, S. (2014). Breast cancer pain management – A review of current & novel therapies. The Indian Journal of Medical Research, 139(2), 216–225. Web.
Wilkie, D., & Ezenwa, M. O. (2012). Pain and symptom management in palliative care and at end of life. Nursing Outlook, 60(6), 357-357. Web.