Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2022
Family involvement in advance care planning for people living with advanced cancer: A systematic mixed-methods review.
Advance care planning is important for people with advanced cancer. Family involvement in advance care planning may be instrumental to achieving goal-concordant care since they frequently become surrogate decision-makers. ⋯ This review provides a comprehensive understanding of family involvement in advance care planning and could inform its assessment and implementation in clinical practice. The number of included articles was limited. Therefore future research must focus on family integration and exploration of stakeholders' perceptions to identify additional components and linkages between them within family-integrated advance care planning.
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2022
Is trained communication about desire to die harmful for patients receiving palliative care? A cohort study.
Palliative patients frequently express a desire to die. Health professionals report uncertainty regarding potential risks of addressing it. ⋯ Desire to die-conversations through trained health professionals do not harm palliative patients. Results cautiously suggest temporary improvement.
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2022
How are family caregivers of people with a serious illness supported by healthcare professionals in their caregiving tasks? A cross-sectional survey of bereaved family caregivers.
Due to medical advances and an increasingly ageing population, the number of people living with a serious illness is rising. This has major implications for the burden on family members of assisting with care. Support of family caregivers by healthcare professionals is needed to ensure they can provide quality care for people with serious illness. ⋯ Most family caregivers of those with serious illness get some form of support from healthcare professionals for their tasks. However, an empowering support strategy for example one aimed at increasing self-efficacy of the family caregiver is rare and end-of-life communication between healthcare professionals and family caregivers needs improvement.
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2022
Area-Based Compassionate Communities: A systematic integrative review of existing initiatives worldwide.
Area-Based Compassionate Communities are community public health interventions which focus on the role of the community in palliative care provision. They apply a set of actions based on the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion which aims to increase people's control over their health. ⋯ While the concept of Area-Based Compassionate Communities is gaining momentum as a new paradigm for the creation of palliative care capacity across society, only a handful of initiatives have been described. The lack of formal evaluations of their envisaged health benefits indicates a pressing need for rigorous research about ongoing and future initiatives.