Palliative medicine
-
Palliative medicine · May 2015
ReviewPatients' preferences in palliative care: A systematic mixed studies review.
It is necessary to develop palliative care to meet existing and future needs of patients and their families. It is important to include knowledge of patient preferences when developing high-quality palliative care services. Previous reviews have focused on patient preferences with regard to specific components of palliative care. There is a need to review research on patient's combined preferences for all elements that constitute palliative care. ⋯ The four themes may be useful for guiding clinical practice and measurements of quality, with the overall goal of meeting future needs and improving quality in palliative care services to suit patients' preferences.
-
Palliative medicine · May 2015
Randomized Controlled TrialPreparing palliative home care nurses to act as facilitators for physicians' learning: Evaluation of a training programme.
Palliative care requires a multidisciplinary care team. General practitioners often ask specialised palliative home care teams for support. Working with specialised nurses offers learning opportunities, also called workplace learning. This can be enhanced by the presence of a learning facilitator. ⋯ Training palliative home care team nurses as facilitator of general practitioners' workplace learning is a feasible but complex intervention. Personal characteristics, interpersonal relationships and contextual variables have to be taken into account. Training expert palliative care nurses to facilitate general practitioners' workplace learning requires careful and individualised mentoring.
-
Palliative medicine · May 2015
Characteristics of episodic breathlessness as reported by patients with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer: Results of a descriptive cohort study.
Episodic breathlessness is one form of refractory breathlessness. Better understanding of the symptom is necessary for effective management. ⋯ Most breathlessness episodes are short (minutes) and severe with significant differences between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer patients. Effective management strategies are warranted to improve symptom relief and coping.
-
Palliative medicine · May 2015
Life-and-death decision-making in the acute phase after a severe stroke: Interviews with relatives.
Decision-making in the acute phase after a severe stroke is complex and may involve life-and-death decisions. Apart from the medical condition and prognosis, quality of life and the deliberation of palliative care should be part of the decision-making process. Relatives play an important role by informing physicians about the patient's values and preferences. However, little is known about how the patients' relatives experience the decision-making process. ⋯ A better understanding of the latent world of experiences of relatives that influence the decision-making process may help physicians and other health-care providers to better involve relatives in decision-making and enhance the care, including palliative care, for patients with severe stroke in line with their values and preferences. Communication between physician and relatives seems vital in this process.
-
Palliative medicine · May 2015
Pain management at the end of life: A comparative study of cancer, dementia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients.
Limited data exist concerning the unique pain characteristics of patients with non-cancer terminal diseases referred for inpatient hospice care. ⋯ Despite the fact that pain is the most common complaint at the end of life, pain management may be suboptimal for some primary diagnoses. Admission diagnosis is the strongest predictor of pain control. Patient with cancer achieve the best pain control, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients are the least likely to have their pain adequately treated.