Vicki Jackson, MD, MPH, of Massachusetts General Hospital, summarizes her keynote lecture (plenary talk).
Judith Vick, MD Candidate, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Rachelle E. Bernacki, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discuss a tool that could help clinicians identify seriously ill patients who would benefit from conversations about their goals and values (Abstract 8).
Kathleen Foley, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the challenges of integrating palliative care in areas without sufficient resources or health-care infrastructure.
Lorenzo Cohen, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses nonpharmacologic approaches to symptom control. Techniques such as acupuncture for managing pain and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, or yoga and meditation to help improve quality of life, can be safely integrated into oncology care.
Betty Ferrell, PhD, RN, of City of Hope, discusses two papers that look at an important issue from different perspectives: depression and anxiety among family caregivers of patients with advanced cancer, and the link between oncologists’ dispositional affect and depressive symptoms in their patients with metastatic cancer (Abstracts 224, 214).
Diane Portman, MD, of Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses clinical pathways that embed palliative care along the spectrum of care for a variety of cancer disease states.
