Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2022
Paramedics delivering palliative and end-of-life care in community-based settings: A systematic integrative review with thematic synthesis.
There is a growing demand for community palliative care and home-based deaths worldwide. However, gaps remain in this service provision, particularly after-hours. Paramedicine may help to bridge that gap and avoid unwanted hospital admissions, but a systematic overview of paramedics' potential role in palliative and end-of-life care is lacking. ⋯ Paramedics are a highly skilled workforce capable of helping to deliver palliative and end-of-life care to people in their homes and reducing avoidable hospital admissions, particularly for palliative emergencies. Future research should focus on investigating the efficacy of palliative care clinical practice guideline implementation for paramedics, understanding other healthcare professionals' perspectives, and undertaking health economic evaluations of targeted interventions.
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2022
General practitioners' evaluations of optimal timing to initiate advance care planning for patients with cancer, organ failure, or multimorbidity: A health records survey study.
Appropriate timing to initiate advance care planning is difficult, especially for individuals with non-malignant disease in community settings. ⋯ The optimal advance care planning timing and reasons to initiate advance care planning indicated by GPs differ between patients with cancer and other illnesses, and they also differ between GPs. This suggests that "the" optimal timing for ACP should be seen as a "window of opportunity" for the different disease trajectories.
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2022
Randomized Controlled TrialEvaluation of a WeChat-based Dyadic Life Review Program for people with advanced cancer and family caregivers: A mixed-method feasibility study.
Cancer not only affects cancer patients' quality of life but also their family caregivers'. A WeChat-based Dyadic Life Review Program was developed by our research team for people with advanced cancer and their family caregivers to improve their quality of life. ⋯ The WeChat-based Dyadic Life Review Program is feasible and acceptable for people with advanced cancer and their family caregivers. It has the potential to improve their quality of life, adaptability and cohesion, and reduce family caregivers' care burden.