Massey is also a leader in the exploration and development of service delivery models and protocols for teaching other clinicians how to create palliative care programs. Massey works with national and international organizations to implement the practice guidelines it has developed. Nowhere is this more evident than in Massey’s role as a Palliative Care Leadership Center, one of nine nationwide charged with providing on-site training for clinicians and administrators. Massey has trained more than 160 hospitals on how to start or grow their own palliative care programs.
Symptom management research
Symptom management studies evaluate therapies to prevent or ameliorate the pain and symptoms associated with cancer and its treatment. Representative examples include:
- Studying interventions to reduce cancer-related fatigue and cachexia, also known as wasting syndrome
- Investigating better ways to manage nausea and vomiting through the delivery of medicine via a topical gel
- Studying testosterone replacement therapy for fatigue and sexual dysfunction in men with cancer
Health services research
VCU Massey is well known for its health services research in the field of palliative care. Areas of focus include:
- Making the business case that palliative care is a financially sustainable means of improving quality of life through pain and symptom control
- Improving health literacy, particularly the study of cultural differences in the understanding and use of palliative care and the ways in which patients make decisions about cancer treatment
- Building better patient-family-health care provider communication models
- Developing measurement models for cancer care and palliative care, and international comparisons of specialist palliative care