The applied procedures may be helpful for multi-centre focus group research on other topics.

Background: Palliative care patients are often described as complex but evidence on complexity is limited. We need to understand complexity, including at individual patient-level, to define specialist palliative care, characterise palliative care populations and meaningfully compare interventions/outcomes. Aim: To explore palliative care stakeholders' views on what makes a patient more or less complex and insights on capturing complexity at patient-level. Design: In-depth qualitative interviews, analysed using Framework analysis. Participants/setting: Semi-structured interviews across six UK centres with patients, family, professionals, managers and senior leads, purposively sampled by experience, background, location and setting (hospital, hospice and community). Results: 65 participants provided an understanding of complexity, which extended far beyond the commonly used physical, psychological, social and spiritual domains. Complexity included how patients interact with family/professionals, how services' respond to needs and societal perspectives on care. 'Pre-existing', 'cumulative' and 'invisible' complexity are further important dimensions to delivering effective palliative and end-of-life care. The dynamic nature of illness and needs over time was also profoundly influential. Adapting Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, we categorised findings into the microsystem (person, needs and characteristics), chronosystem (dynamic influences of time), mesosystem (interactions with family/health professionals), exosystem (palliative care services/systems) and macrosystem (societal influences). Stakeholders found it acceptable to capture complexity at the patient-level, with perceived benefits for improving palliative care resource allocation. Conclusion: Our conceptual framework encompasses additional elements beyond physical, psychological, social and spiritual domains and advances systematic understanding of complexity within the context of palliative care. This framework helps capture patient-level complexity and target resource provision in specialist palliative care.

When studying the patient perspective on communication, some studies rely on analogue patients (patients and healthy subjects) who rate videotaped medical consultations while putting themselves in the shoes of the video-patient. To describe the rationales, methodology, and outcomes of studies using video-vignette designs in which videotaped medical consultations are watched and judged by analogue patients. Pubmed, Embase, Psychinfo and CINAHL databases were systematically searched up to February 2012. Data was extracted on: study characteristics and quality, design, rationales, internal and external validity, limitations and analogue patients’ perceptions of studied communication. A meta-analysis was conducted on the distribution of analogue patients’ evaluations of communication. Thirty-four studies were included, comprising both scripted and clinical studies, of average-to-superior quality. Studies provided unspecific, ethical as well as methodological rationales for conducting video-vignette studies with analogue patients. Scripted studies provided the most specific methodological rationales and tried the most to increase and test internal validity (e.g. by performing manipulation checks) and external validity (e.g. by determining identification with video-patient). Analogue patients’ perceptions of communication largely overlap with clinical patients’ perceptions. The meta-analysis revealed that analogue patients’ evaluations of practitioners’ communication are not subject to ceiling effects. Analogue patients’ evaluations of communication equaled clinical patients’ perceptions, while overcoming ceiling effects. This implies that analogue patients can be included as proxies for clinical patients in studies on communication, taken some described precautions into account. Insights from this review may ease decisions about including analogue patients in video-vignette studies, improve the quality of these studies and increase knowledge on communication from the patient perspective.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11606-012-2111-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Explicit prognostic information may lead to better outcomes than general information. In addition, reassurance about nonabandonment might provide realistic hope but should be lived up to. More research is needed to translate these findings into clinical care.