Journal of pain and symptom management
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Therapeutic presence is one of the fundamental skills that palliative care providers have to offer. The COVID-19 pandemic has created many barriers to connection that impact the way providers practice. This narrative piece about a remote cross-country palliative care encounter offers reflections on creating therapeutic presence amidst the current pandemic.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2022
Palliative care in hospitalized middle-aged and older adults with COVID-19.
As COVID-19 overwhelms health systems worldwide, palliative care strategies may ensure rational use of resources while safeguarding patient comfort and dignity. ⋯ One in five middle-aged and older adults hospitalized with COVID-19 received palliative care in our cohort. Patients who were very old, multimorbid, frail, and had severe COVID-19 were more likely to receive palliative care. However, it was often delayed until advanced and invasive life support measures had already been implemented.
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This series will focus on addressing the intersection of race and racism in palliative care through a series of roundtable discussions with interdisciplinary clinicians, researchers, educators, and leaders in palliative care. These short discussions are intended to stimulate readers to examine issues of race and racism within the field of hospice and palliative care - in the various forms that it appears - as well as serve as a continual call to action to facilitate and promote equity.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2022
Progress update: Palliative care development between 2017 and 2020 in five African countries.
This article provides a progress update on the development of palliative care in five countries in Africa-Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda-between 2017 and 2021, and explores the role of palliative care advocates and the Open Society Foundations in this process. ⋯ The experiences in these countries suggest that mixing advocacy, communications, and technical assistance can lead to substantial progress for patient access although full inclusion in universal health coverage remained uncertain in all but Rwanda.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2022
Locating Advance Care Planning Documents in the Electronic Health Record during Emergency Care.
Emergency Departments (EDs) care for people at critical junctures in their illness trajectories, but Advanced Care Planning (ACP) seldom happens during ED visits. One barrier to incorporating patient goals into ED care may be locating ACP documents in the electronic health record (EHR). ⋯ Even under optimal conditions with social work availability, ACP documents are lacking for ED patients. Multiple potential locations of ACP documents and inaccurate linkage to the Storyboard are potentially addressable barriers to ACP conversations.