• Support Care Cancer · Dec 2014

    Making sense of continuous sedation in end-of-life care for cancer patients: an interview study with bereaved relatives in three European countries.

    • S M Bruinsma, J Brown, A van der Heide, L Deliens, L Anquinet, S A Payne, J E Seymour, J A C Rietjens, and UNBIASED.
    • Department of Public Health, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, P.O. Box 2040, 3000 CA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, s.m.bruinsma@erasmusmc.nl.
    • Support Care Cancer. 2014 Dec 1;22(12):3243-52.

    PurposeThe purpose of the study was to explore relatives' descriptions and experiences of continuous sedation in end-of-life care for cancer patients and to identify and explain differences between respondents from the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK.MethodsIn-depth interviews were held between January 2011 and May 2012 with 38 relatives of 32 cancer patients who received continuous sedation until death in hospitals, the community, and hospices/palliative care units.ResultsRelatives' descriptions of the practice referred to the outcome, to practical aspects, and to the goals of sedation. While most relatives believed sedation had contributed to a 'good death' for the patient, yet many expressed concerns. These related to anxieties about the patient's wellbeing, their own wellbeing, and questions about whether continuous sedation had shortened the patient's life (mostly UK), or whether an alternative approach would have been better. Such concerns seemed to have been prompted by relatives witnessing unexpected events such as the patient coming to awareness during sedation. In the Netherlands and in Belgium, several relatives reported that the start of the sedation allowed for a planned moment of 'saying goodbye'. In contrast, UK relatives discerned neither an explicit point at which sedation was started nor a specific moment of farewell.ConclusionsRelatives believed that sedation contributed to the patient having a good death. Nevertheless, they also expressed concerns that may have been provoked by unexpected events for which they were unprepared. There seems to exist differences in the process of saying goodbye between the NL/BE and the UK.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…