Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Jan 2015
Using continuous sedation until death for cancer patients: a qualitative interview study of physicians' and nurses' practice in three European countries.
Extensive debate surrounds the practice of continuous sedation until death to control refractory symptoms in terminal cancer care. We examined reported practice of United Kingdom, Belgian and Dutch physicians and nurses. ⋯ This qualitative analysis suggests that there is systematic variation in end-of-life care sedation practice and its conceptualization in the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands.
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Palliative medicine · Jan 2015
Administering anticipatory medications in end-of-life care: a qualitative study of nursing practice in the community and in nursing homes.
In the United Kingdom, an approach to improving end-of-life care has been the introduction of 'just in case' or 'anticipatory' medications. Nurses are often responsible for deciding when to use anticipatory medications, but little is known about their experiences. ⋯ Nurses take a leading role in the administration of anticipatory medications. Nurses apply consideration and caution to the administration of anticipatory medications but some experience emotional burden. Education, training and experience played a role in the nurses' confidence and should continue to be central to efforts to improving the quality of palliative care in the community and nursing homes.
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Palliative medicine · Jan 2015
Multicenter StudyEvaluation of measurement equivalence of the Family Satisfaction with the End-of-Life Care in an ethnically diverse cohort: tests of differential item functioning.
The Family Satisfaction with End-of-Life Care is an internationally used measure of satisfaction with cancer care. However, the Family Satisfaction with End-of-Life Care has not been studied for equivalence of item endorsement across different socio-demographic groups using differential item functioning. ⋯ Differential item functioning was observed primarily for race and education. No differential item functioning of high magnitude was observed for any item, and the overall impact of differential item functioning was negligible. One item, satisfaction with "the patient's pain relief," might be singled out for further study, given that this item was both hypothesized and observed to show differential item functioning for race and education.