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Glendon R Tait,1 Joanna Bates,2 Kori A LaDonna,3 Valerie N Schulz,4 Patricia H Strachan,5 Allan McDougall,3 Lorelei Lingard3 1Department of Psychiatry and Division of Medical Education, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, 2Centre for Health Education Scholarship, Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, BC, 3Centre for Education Research and Innovation, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, 4Palliative Care, London Health Sciences Centre, University Hospital, London; 5School of Nursing, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada Background: Heart failure (HF), one of the three leading causes of death, is a chronic, progressive, incurable disease. There is growing support for integration of palliative care’s holistic approach to suffering, but insufficient understanding of how this would happen in the complex team context of HF care. This study examined how HF care teams, as defined by patients, work together to provide care to patients with advanced disease. Methods: Team members were identified by each participating patient, generating team sampling units (TSUs) for each patient. Drawn from five study sites in three Canadian provinces, our dataset consists of 209 interviews from 50 TSUs. Drawing on a theoretical framing of HF teams as complex adaptive systems (CAS), interviews were analyzed using the constant comparative method associated with constructivist grounded theory. Results: This paper centers on the dominant theme of system practices, how HF care delivery is reported to work organizationally, socially, and practically, and describes two subthemes: “the way things work around here”, which were commonplace, routine ways of doing things, and “the way we make things work around here”, which were more conscious, effortful adaptations to usual practice in response to emergent needs. An adaptive practice, often a small alteration to routine, could have amplified effects beyond those intended by the innovating team member and could extend to other settings. Conclusion: Adaptive practices emerged unpredictably and were variably experienced by team members. Our study offers an empirically grounded explanation of how HF care teams self-organize and how adaptive practices emerge from nonlinear interdependencies among diverse agents. We use these insights to reframe the question of palliative care integration, to ask how best to foster palliative care-aligned adaptive practices in HF care. This work has implications for health care’s growing challenge of providing care to those with chronic medical illness in complex, team-based settings. Keywords: palliative care, qualitative, complex adaptive system, multimorbidity, health care teams

Background: Complex, chronically ill patients require interprofessional teams to address their multiple health needs; heart failure (HF) is an iconic example of this growing problem. While patients are the common denominator in interprofessional care teams, patients have not explicitly informed our understanding of team composition and function. Their perspectives are crucial for improving quality, patient-centred care., Objectives: To explore how individuals with HF conceptualize their care team, and perceive team members' roles., Setting and Participants: Individuals with advanced HF were recruited from five cities in three Canadian provinces., Design: Individuals were asked to identify their HF care team during semi-structured interviews. Team members' titles and roles, quotes pertaining to team composition and function, and frailty criteria were extracted and analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis., Results: A total of 62 individuals with HF identified 2-19 team members. Caregivers, nurses, family physicians and cardiologists were frequently identified; teams also included dentists, foot care specialists, drivers, housekeepers and spiritual advisors. Most individuals met frailty criteria and described participating in self-management., Discussion: Individuals with HF perceived being active participants, not passive recipients, of care. They identified teams that were larger and more diverse than traditional biomedical conceptualizations. However, the nature and importance of team members' roles varied according to needs, relationships and context. Patients' degree of agency was negotiated within this context, causing multiple, sometimes conflicting, responses., Conclusion: Ignoring the patient's role on the care team may contribute to fragmented care. However, understanding the team through the patient's lens - and collaborating meaningfully among identified team members - may improve health-care delivery., (© 2016 The Authors. Health Expectations Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: Controversy presently exists surrounding the management of patients with subacromial impingement. This study aims to highlight current UK practices in the management of these patients., Methods: BESS members were invited to complete a questionnaire and responses were received from 157 consultant shoulder surgeons., Results: Physiotherapy is an integral part of management for 93% of surgeons with a minimum period of 12 weeks being most popular prior to consideration of arthroscopic subacromial decompression. Subacromial steroid injection is used by 95% and 86% repeat this if the patient has failed to respond to a previous injection by the general practioner. From initial presentation, 77% felt there should be at least 3 months of conservative management before proceeding to surgery. Good but transient response to subacromial injection was considered the best predictor of good surgical outcome by 77%. The coracoacromial ligament is fully released by 78%, although there was greater variation in how aggressive surgeons were with acromioplasty. Most (59%) do not include the nontender acromioclavicular joint to any extent in routine acromioplasty. Hospital physiotherapy protocols are used by 63% for postoperative rehabilitation., Conclusions: Variation exists in the management regimes offered to patients with subacromial impingement, but most employ a minimum period of 12 weeks of conservative management incorporating physiotherapy and at least 2 subacromial steriod injections.

Context: There is a growing call to integrate palliative care for patients with advanced heart failure (HF). However, the knowledge to inform integration efforts comes largely from interview and survey research with individual patients and providers. This work has been critically important in raising awareness of the need for integration, but it is insufficient to inform solutions that must be enacted not by isolated individuals but by complex care teams. Research methods are urgently required to support systematic exploration of the experiences of patients with HF, family caregivers, and health care providers as they interact as a care team., Objectives: To design a research methodology that can support systematic exploration of the experiences of patients with HF, caregivers, and health care providers as they interact as a care team., Methods: This article describes in detail a methodology that we have piloted and are currently using in a multisite study of HF care teams., Results: We describe three aspects of the methodology: the theoretical framework, an innovative sampling strategy, and an iterative system of data collection and analysis that incorporates four data sources and four analytical steps., Conclusion: We anticipate that this innovative methodology will support groundbreaking research in both HF care and other team settings in which palliative integration efforts are emerging for patients with advanced nonmalignant disease., (Copyright © 2013 U.S. Cancer Pain Relief Committee. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: The primary objective of this study was to assess whether pentagastrin-induced panic symptoms are associated with release of free fatty acids (FFAs) in a manner that could explain the mechanism of correlations observed between serum cholesterol levels and frequency and severity of panic attacks in patients with panic disorder (PD). A secondary objective was to assess whether pretreatment with ethinyl estradiol (EE) attenuates pentagastrin-induced release of FFAs., Methods: A double-blind, crossover, placebo-controlled study was conducted in which patients with PD and healthy volunteers received 2 injections of pentagastrin, 7-10 days apart, with randomization of the order of pretreatment with placebo and EE., Results: We found a statistically significant, time-dependent release of FFAs in response to pentagastrin challenge. However, this release of FFAs was not attenuated by pretreatment with EE., Conclusions: These results support the hypothesis that release of FFAs in association with panic attacks occurs in a manner similar to the stress-induced lipolysis model. This suggests a possible mechanism for the elevated serum cholesterol levels observed in patients with PD. However, the occurrence of a delayed increase in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol following induction of a panic attack remains to be tested in studiesincorporating a placebo injection visit and timed measurements of LDL cholesterol.