Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2020
Feasibility and Acceptability of Inpatient Palliative Care E-Family Meetings During COVID-19 Pandemic.
Family meetings are fundamental to the practice of palliative medicine and serve as a cornerstone of intervention on the inpatient palliative care consultation service. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the structure and process of in-patient family meetings, owing to necessary but restrictive visitor policies that did not allow families to be present in the hospital. We describe implementation of telemedicine to facilitate electronic family (e-family) meetings to facilitate in-patient palliative care. ⋯ Of the 10 unique family participants who agreed to be interviewed, their overall ratings of the e-family meetings were high. Over 80% of respondent families participants reported that they agreed or strongly agreed that they were able to ask all of their questions, felt comfortable expressing their thoughts and feelings with the clinical team, felt like they understood the care their loved one received, and that the virtual family meeting helped them trust the clinical team. Of patients who were able to communicate, 50% of family respondents reported that the e-family meeting helped them understand their loved one's thoughts and wishes.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2020
Life beyond Heart Failure- what are the long-term challenges, supportive care needs and views towards supportive care of multi-ethnic Asian patients with left ventricular assist device (LVAD) and their caregivers?
Challenges experienced by patients with the left ventricular assist device (LVAD) and their caregivers during the early period after LVAD implantation are well documented. However, little is known about long-term challenges, supportive care needs, and views toward supportive care of Asian LVAD patients and caregivers. ⋯ Asian LVAD patients and caregivers experienced long-term challenges and had unique supportive care needs. Our findings have implications on the design of future interventions and supportive care models.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2020
Expanding the Interdisciplinary Palliative Medicine Workforce: A Longitudinal Education and Mentoring Program for Practicing Clinicians.
The disparity between gaps in workforce and availability of palliative care (PC) services is an increasing issue in health care. To meet the demand, team-based PC requires additional educational training for all clinicians caring for persons with serious illness. ⋯ Teaching PC and program development knowledge and skills to an interdisciplinary regional cohort of practicing clinicians yielded improvements in clinical skills, implementation of practice change projects, and a sense of belonging to a supportive professional network.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2020
Integrating the surprise question, palliative care screening tool, and clinical risk models to identify peritoneal dialysis patients with high 1-year mortality.
Universal screening to identify vulnerable patients who may receive limited benefits from life-sustaining treatments can facilitate palliative care in dialysis populations. ⋯ Screening with the use of the integrated measurement can identify high-risk PD patients. This approach may facilitate palliative care interventions for at-risk subpopulations.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2020
The Urgency of Spiritual Care: COVID-19 and the Critical Need for Whole-Person Palliation.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis has amplified the importance of palliative care to countless patients suffering with and dying from this disease, as well as to their families, communities, and the worldwide cadre of overburdened health care workers. Particularly urgent is the need for spiritual care specialists and generalists to address spiritual suffering given the degree of isolation, loneliness, and vulnerability caused by this pandemic. ⋯ All disciplines are ultimately responsible for ensuring that spiritual care is prioritized to improve quality of life and the experience of patients and families facing spiritual emergencies amid the complex life-and-death scenarios inherent to coronavirus disease 2019. Although the pandemic has revealed serious fault lines in many health care domains, it has also underscored the need to recommit to spiritual care as an essential component of whole-person palliative care.