In palliative care populations, PCOMs feedback improves awareness of unmet need and allows professionals to act to address patients' needs. It consequently benefits patients' emotional and psychological quality of life. However, more high-quality evidence is needed in noncancer populations and across a wider range of settings.

Background:Cancer pain is a complex multidimensional construct. Physicians use a patient-centered approach for its effective management, placing a great emphasis on patient self-reported ratings of pain. In the literature, studies have shown that a patient's ethnicity may influence the experience of pain as there are variations in pain outcomes among different ethnic groups. At present, little is known regarding the effect of ethnicity on the pain experience of cancer patients; currently, there are no systematic reviews examining this relationship.Materials and Methods:A systematic search of the literature in October 2013 using the keywords in Group 1 together with Group 2 and Group 3 was conducted in five online databases (1) Medline (1946–2013), (2) Embase (1980–2012), (3) The Cochrane Library, (4) Pubmed, and (5) Psycinfo (1806–2013). The search returned 684 studies. Following screening by inclusion and exclusion criteria, the full text was retrieved for quality assessment. In total, 11 studies were identified for this review. The keywords used for the search were as follows: Group 1-Cancer; Group 2- Pain, Pain measurement, Analgesic, Analgesia; Group 3- Ethnicity, Ethnic Groups, Minority Groups, Migrant, Culture, Cultural background, Ethnic Background.Results:Two main themes were identified from the included quantitative and qualitative studies, and ethnic differences were found in: (1) The management of cancer pain and (2) The pain experience. Six studies showed that ethnic groups face barriers to pain treatment and one study did not. Three studies showed ethnic differences in symptom severity and one study showed no difference. Interestingly, two qualitative studies highlighted cultural differences in the perception of cancer pain as Asian patients tended to normalize pain compared to Western patients who engage in active health-seeking behavior.Conclusion:There is an evidence to suggest that the cancer pain experience is different between ethnicities. Minority patients face potential barriers for effective pain management due to problems with communication and poor pain assessment. Cultural perceptions of cancer may influence individual conceptualization of pain and affect health-seeking behavior.

There is not enough evidence to support the association between social class and psychosis. While some findings showed an association between low social class and psychosis, there were a number of conflicting studies showing no association or a link with higher social class. Interestingly, the results followed a temporal pattern, as all the studies conducted after 2001 supported an association between low SES at birth and psychosis. Four of the six studies employed a prospective design with large sample populations, indicating the need for further investigation.