Examining the International Palliative Care Systems in Rural Areas: Protocol for a Comparative Case Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The aging population in the Global North is associated with an increased prevalence of multiple chronic diseases that would benefit from integrated palliative care. In this context, it is vital to consider the effectiveness of health care systems' response to the needs of the older population residing in rural areas, including access to palliative care services. Understanding palliative care program availability and palliative care system characteristics is important in creating useful health interventions in rural areas. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to provide an international view on palliative care in rural areas. A study exploring palliative care services offered in Southern Minnesota will be carried out, building on a previous study conducted in Osona, Spain. Findings from both studies will be compared, providing insights into the strengths of each system and identifying areas for growth. METHODS: This study will be performed using qualitative case study methodology. Using a similar methodology to the one used in the Spanish study, palliative care services will be explored in a similarly sized rural area in Southern Minnesota. This will be accomplished by (1) reviewing available literature related to the Southern Minnesota palliative care system and (2) identifying key providers in this US palliative care system who will be invited to participate in semistructured interviews. The study participants will be asked about the gaps between ideal integrated palliative care system services and the existing complementary palliative care services, and the ethical issues and dilemmas that evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS: Following ethical approval for this protocol, data collection is anticipated to begin in spring or summer 2022 and is expected to take 6 months. Data collection will be followed by data analysis in fall 2022. Finally, the researchers plan to disseminate the findings in spring 2023. CONCLUSIONS: Comparing 2 similarly sized but culturally different rural palliative care systems in Minnesota and Osona will provide insights into how integrated palliative care systems impact the older population and those with chronic illnesses. Study findings will contribute to enhanced patient care, organizational improvements, policy change, and an understanding of the impact of different health care system models. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/36037.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.062 | 0.051 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.073 | 0.010 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".