Psychological support interventions for family caregivers should take gender-specific risk factors into account. Interventions focusing on keeping up hope while caring for a terminally ill family member may be a valuable addition to palliative services to improve support for family carers. Women may benefit from interventions that address adaptive coping and strategies to deal with the dual demands of employment and caring. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study confirms the high risk of informal caregivers of advanced cancer patients to develop psychiatric disorders and suggests a practically feasible approach to identify at risk caregivers to offer support.

This study identifies relevant staff challenges in work with migrant patients. Concrete suggestions for improvement include measures on an organizational level, team level, and personal tools. The suggested measures are applicable to improve work satisfaction and culture-sensitive care not only in cancer care but also in other areas of medicine.

This narrative review deals with the challenge of defining adequate therapy goals and intensive care unit (ICU) admission criteria for critically ill patients with cancer. Several specific complications of critically ill patients with cancer require close collaborations of intensive care and cancer specialists. Intensivists require a basic understanding of the pathophysiology, diagnosis and therapy of common cancer-specific problems. Cancer specialists must be knowledgeable in preventing, detecting and treating imminent or manifest organ failures. In case of one or more organ dysfunctions, ICU admissions must be evaluated early. In order to properly define the therapy goals for critically ill patients with cancer, decision-makers must be aware of the short-term intensive care prognosis as well as the long-term oncological options and perspectives. Multidisciplinary teamwork is key when it comes down to decisions on ICU admission, planning of therapeutic aims, patient management in the ICU and tailored therapy limiting with smooth transition into a palliative care (PC) setting, whenever appropriate.

BackgroundSedation is used to an increasing extent in end-of-life care. Definitions and indications in this field are based on expert opinions and case series. Little is known about this practice at palliative care units in Austria.MethodsPatients who died in Austrian palliative care units between June 2012 and June 2013 were identified. A predefined set of baseline characteristics and information on sedation during the last two weeks before death were obtained by reviewing the patients’ charts.ResultsThe data of 2414 patients from 23 palliative care units were available for analysis. Five hundred two (21 %) patients received sedation in the last two weeks preceding their death, 356 (71 %) received continuous sedation until death, and 119 (24 %) received intermittent sedation. The median duration of sedation was 48 h (IQR 10–72 h); 168 patients (34 %) were sedated for less than 24 h. Indications for sedation were delirium (51 %), existential distress (32 %), dyspnea (30 %), and pain (20 %). Midazolam was the most frequently used drug (79 %), followed by lorazepam (13 %), and haloperidol (10 %). Sedated patients were significantly younger (median age 67 years vs. 74 years, p ≤ 0.001, r = 0.22), suffered more often from an oncological disease (92 % vs. 82 %, p ≤ 0.001, φ = 0.107), and were hospitalized more frequently (94 % vs. 76 %, p ≤ 0.001, φ = 0.175). The median number of days between admission to a palliative care ward/mobile palliative care team and death did not differ significantly in sedated versus non-sedated patients (10 vs. 9 days; p = 0.491).ConclusionThis study provides insights into the practice of end-of-life sedation in Austria. Critical appraisal of these data will serve as a starting point for the development of nation-wide guidelines for palliative sedation in Austria.