Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2015
Medical Students' Death Anxiety: Severity and Association with Psychological Health and Attitudes Toward Palliative Care.
Death anxiety (DA) is related to awareness of the reality of dying and death and can be negatively related to a person's psychological health. Physicians' DA also may influence their care for patients approaching death. Doctors face death in a professional context for the first time at medical school, but knowledge about DA among medical students is limited. ⋯ The associations between high DA and lower psychological health and negative attitudes toward palliative care are concerning. It is important to address DA during medical education to enhance student's psychological health and the quality of their future palliative care provision.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2015
The Benefits of Authorized Agent Controlled Analgesia (AACA) to Control Pain and Other Symptoms at the End of Life.
Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital is a community hospital with a palliative care unit providing inpatient symptom management and end-of-life care. The palliative care unit provides authorized agent controlled analgesia (AACA). ⋯ An AACA system has been highly satisfactory for patients, families, and staff, meeting the goals of 1) allowing patients with a terminal condition to die peacefully and 2) enabling families to share in the patients' care, providing them with a more favorable memory at the end of life.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2015
Implementing Outcome Measures Within an Enhanced Palliative Care Day Care Model.
Specialist palliative care day care (SPDC) units provide an array of services to patients and their families and can increase continuity of care between inpatient and homecare settings. A multidisciplinary teamwork approach is emphasized, and different models of day care exist. Depending on the emphasis of care, the models can be social, medical, therapeutic, or mixed. We describe our experience of introducing an enhanced therapeutic specialist day care model and using both patient- and carer-rated tools to monitor patient outcomes. ⋯ This enhanced therapeutic model of SPDC allows for the tracking of progress toward specific goals and monitoring of patients' symptoms, functional status, QoL, and complexity. Retrospective analyses of validated tools show SPDC results in both maintenance and improvement of all parameters.