Background: Although palliative care is now an essential health service under Universal Health Coverage, ensuring access and appropriate care for refugees is a specific challenge for this large population. Aim: To identify the needs and experiences of adult refugees in Jordan with advanced cancer and informal caregivers. Design: A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. Setting/participants: Participants were purposively sampled at two Jordanian hospitals to achieve heterogeneity by age, gender, country of origin, and primary diagnosis. Results: Twenty-nine refugees (22 patients, 7 caregivers) participated, and four themes were generated: (1) Psychological distress and sustaining social support. Refugees often experienced unmet psychosocial needs. However, psychosocial support was reported either absent or limited. (2) Knowledge and uncertainty. Lack of information and poor communication between healthcare providers and patients caused significant distress due to uncertainty. (3) Family anxiety and support roles. Being away from the home country cut patients and caregivers off from their wider social support network, which added increased anxiety and responsibilities to caregivers. (4) Compounded trauma and poverty. Many refugees have experienced trauma related to war that may affect their physical and mental health. They faced serious financial crises caused by the rising cost of medicines and treatment. Conclusions: This study reveals the impact of fractured families and networks on social support in advanced cancer, and the compounding trauma of the disease for refugees. Detailed person-centred assessment and emphasis on psychosocial support is essential, and home-based care should not presume community support for patients to remain at home.

IntroductionPerson-centred care (PCC) is internationally recognised as a critical component of high-quality healthcare. However, PCC evolved in a few high-income countries and there are limited data exploring this concept across the vast majority of countries which are low- and middle-income. This study aimed to appraise and adapt a PCC model across three serious physical conditions in three middle-income countries and generate an evidence-based framework and recommendations for globally relevant PCC.MethodsCross-national, cross-sectional qualitative study. In depth, semistructured interviews conducted with: advanced cancer patients in Jordan (n=50), their caregivers (n=20) and healthcare professionals (HCPs) (n=20); chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients in South Africa (n=22), their caregivers (n=19) and HCPs (n=22); heart failure patients in Thailand (n=14), their caregivers (n=10) and HCPs (n=12). Data were analysed using framework analysis. Santana et al’s PCC model (2018) and Giusti et al’s systematic review (2020) were used to construct an a priori coding frame for deductive analysis, with additional inductive coding for coding that did not fit the frame.ResultsThe findings both reveal specific practical actions that contribute towards delivering PCC and highlight new cross-national domains of person-centredness: interdependency and collectivism; bringing care into the home and community; equity and non-discrimination; addressing health and illness within the context of limited resources; and workforce well-being.ConclusionThe data suggest that PCC requires particular structural features of the healthcare system to be in place, such as professional education in PCC values and partnerships with community-based workers. These structures may better enable PCC processes, including tailored information sharing and providing genuine opportunities for patients to do the things that matter to them, such as making informed care decisions and sustaining social relationships. PCC must also accommodate a collectivist perspective and support the well-being of the workforce.

We show here that in a difficult-to-treat case of neuropathic allodynia resulting from radiotherapy, the use of local 5% L-menthol might be of benefit. These data can be added to the case reports that have previously shown the efficacy of topical menthol in different neuropathic processes. 5e7 All these case reports and a very recent clinical study indicating that topical menthol has analgesic potential in chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathic pain and postmastectomy pain syndrome 8 prompt the systematic evaluation of topical menthol for neuropathic pain.