• Support Care Cancer · Jul 2014

    Quality of dying and death with cancer in Israel.

    • Michal Braun, Ilanit Hasson-Ohayon, Sarah Hales, Camilla Zimmermann, Anne Rydall, Tamar Peretz, and Gary Rodin.
    • School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Nes Harim 610, Herzlia, 99885, Israel, bmichalpsy@gmail.com.
    • Support Care Cancer. 2014 Jul 1;22(7):1973-80.

    BackgroundThe quality of dying and death refers to the evaluation of the final days of life and the moment of death with respect to how it is prepared for, faced and experienced by those with a terminal illness. It includes experience in multiple domains: physical, psychological, social, spiritual or existential, the nature of health care, life closure and death preparation, and the circumstances of death.AimTo explore the quality of dying and death in cancer patients in Israel and its relationship to place of death and socio-demographic characteristics of the primary caregivers and the deceased.DesignRetrospective assessment of the quality of dying and death, based on caregiver responses to the Quality of Dying and Death (QODD) questionnaire (overall score ranges from 0 to 100; higher scores reflect better dying and death experiences) 8 to 10 months after the death.ParticipantsNinety-five caregivers of Jewish cancer patients, most of whom were female spouses or children of the deceased.ResultsMean QODD score was 57.2 (standard deviation [SD]=15), which is in the low-moderate range. Place of death, gender and age of the caregiver, and age of the deceased, were associated with QODD score.ConclusionsThis retrospective study in Israel demonstrated that the overall quality of dying and death was regarded as poor by almost half of the caregivers. These findings may reflect the relative lack of specialized palliative care and advance care planning in Israel at the time of this study, which took place between 2006 and 2009. Further research and enhancement of palliative care resources may be needed in Israel and several encouraging recent developments (e.g. staff training and legislation) suggest that such changes are now underway.

      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…