Here at Palliverse, we love online communities of practice. The monthly #PallANZ tweet chat, co-hosted by Palliverse and Palliative Care Australia, is not the only online educational opportunity that may be of interest this week. While we hope you join us for Thursday evening’s #PallANZ discussion of advance care planning, you might also like to check out the following exciting events: Continue reading
When I first read Sonia’s post about the School for Health and Care Radicals (SHCR) a year ago, little did I know that I would be signing up for one of the most inspiring educational experiences of my ten years as a doctor, resulting in unexpected personal and professional growth.
“Anyone who wants to bring about change has to be ready to break the rules. But in health and social care, that can be really difficult. The art of rocking the boat while staying in it is something it seems no-one is ready to help you learn.” – School for Health and Care Radicals
Working on my SHCR workbook – over coffee
This article is going a bit viral on social media. Does it mirror your experiences? It certain does mine, having worked for a long time in consultation services in acute hospitals. There have been a number of comments and letters to the Age supporting the message of the article, written by a senior doctor about the death of his father. http://www.theage.com.au/comment/hospitals-must-shift-focus-of-endoflife-care-from-disease-to-people-20150707-gi6joz
Do you like technology? Innovation? Palliative care? Research? Why, these things are what @palliverse is all about – and why you/we are here in the first place!
Guess what? These things are exactly what the #MyPal podcasts from @amaranwosu are all about as well. How about that!
Check it out here and also on iTunes. Be amazed. Happy listening!
Malignant psoas syndrome is said to be extremely rare, but I keep seeing it. Admittedly, working in the pain and palliative care service in a specialist cancer centre, if anyone was going to see it, you would think it would be my team.
I have had three patients with MPS this year and because each time it’s something that the clinical staff are not familiar with, I thought I would share a  short summary with the Palliverse.
The original description of MPS in 1990 (1) described patients with:
In 2010, Stevens et al wrote a helpful review (2) of MPS with a case review, mechanisms and theories. Five years ago, according to the paper, there had only been 28 cases reported in the English speaking literature.
I will leave interested readers to explore the papers themselves, but it describes polymodal pharmacotherapy (aka throw everything at it), plus some novel strategies like local anaesthetic block of psoas sheath.
What has encouraged me to put fingers to keyboards tonight though is the referral of yet another patient with psoas syndrome, plus this Japanese case series by Takase et al (3). It describes three patients with MPS who had excellent results with methadone (15-30 mg/day). Their average pain scores were reduced by an astounding 7 points with greatly improved function.
I am pretty keen to try adjuvant methadone for my new referral.
Have you seen any malignant psoas syndrome cases before?Were they recognised and treated as such? How did it go? Particularly keen to hear whether anyone has tried methadone.Â
Sonia
References:
1. Stevens MJ, Gonet YM: Malignant psoas syndrome: Recognition of an oncologic entity. Australas Radiol 1990; 34:150–154.
2. Mark John Stevens, Charlotte Atkinson, and Andrew M. Broadbent. Journal of Palliative Medicine. February 2010, 13(2): 211-216. doi:10.1089/jpm.2009.0193.
3. Takase Naoto, Ikegaki Junichi, Nishimura Harumi, Yuasa Sayoko, Ito Yumiko, and Kizawa Yoshiyuki. Journal of Palliative Medicine. July 2015, 18(7): 645-652. doi:10.1089/jpm.2014.0387.
Team Palliverse is excited to be presenting at the upcoming Palliative Care Research Network Victoria (PCRNV) Forum on March 24th at 5pm AEDT (2pm AWST; 7pm NZDT). We will be talking about the use of social media in palliative care research and clinical practice. Join us in person, via webinar or on twitter!
The Centre for Palliative Care in Melbourne runs a series of Hot Topics lectures for the field. They have kindly published videos of their recent talks, which we would like to share with you.
The Palliverse team are going to start a collection of resources in free open access medical and nursing education (#FOAMed and #FOANed) relative to Palliative Care, and here’s the first addition to the collection.
A.Prof Jenny Philip is a wonderful speaker and takes us on a journey through the controversial issue of palliative sedation. Starting with definition (variable) and incidence (also variable), she describes for us some European guidelines on palliative sedation and then guides a panel of experienced palliative care professionals through three cases exploring issues in palliative sedation.
palliverse.com 