Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Apr 2023
'Sadly I think we are sort of still quite white, middle-class really' - Inequities in access to bereavement support: Findings from a mixed methods study.
Voluntary and community sector bereavement services are central to bereavement support in the UK. ⋯ Service providers report inequities in access to bereavement support. Attention needs to be paid to identifying, assessing and meeting unmet needs for appropriate bereavement support. Identified positive interventions can inform service provision and research.
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Palliative medicine · Apr 2023
Bridging cultures in palliative care: A qualitative study of the care of Indigenous Australians with advanced illness.
Lack of access, late engagement and limited referral for palliative care remain critical issues in supporting Indigenous Australians with life limiting illness. ⋯ For many Indigenous people, the health system may be experienced as inflexible, narrowly focused and even prejudiced and traumatising. For Indigenous patients at the end of life, these challenges are heightened. The Indigenous Hospital Liaison Officers, working at the intersections of these two cultures, are key to negotiating such challenges as they seek opportunities to facilitate communication and understanding between firmly held cultural needs.
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Palliative medicine · Apr 2023
A thematic analysis of hospital medical records of patients with advanced illness experiencing incarceration in the last 3 months of life.
The constraining prison culture is not, for the most part, conducive to the provision of palliative care for people in prison. ⋯ Institutional influences of security and control challenged the provision of equitable end-of-life care for people experiencing incarceration. Further research is required to inform, and incorporate, best approaches to identifying patient wishes and advance planning into care within, or despite, the constrains of incarceration. Policy reform and a coordinated, best practice approach to the management of end-of-life care for people experiencing incarceration is needed.
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Palliative medicine · Apr 2023
The association between socioeconomic position and the symptoms and concerns of hospital inpatients seen by specialist palliative care: Analysis of routinely collected patient data.
Understanding how socioeconomic position influences the symptoms and concerns of patients approaching the end of life is important for planning more equitable care. Data on this relationship is lacking, particularly for patients with non-cancer conditions. ⋯ Targetting resources to address practical and communication concerns could be a strategy to reduce inequalities. Further research in different hospitals and across different settings using patient centred outcome measures is needed to examine inequalities.
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Palliative medicine · Apr 2023
Bureaucracy and burden: An Intersectionality-Based Policy Analysis of social welfare policy with consequences for carers of people with life-limiting illness.
For informal carers of people with life-limiting illness, social welfare policy related to income support and housing has been associated with varied psychosocial issues, yet remains relatively under-explored. An intersectional approach offers potential to illuminate diverse experiences and implications. ⋯ This intersectional analysis establishes critical exploration of the framing and consequences of welfare policy for carers of people with life-limiting illness, presented in a novel conceptual model. Implications relate to intersectoral development of structural competency, responsiveness to structurally vulnerable carers in clinical practice, and needed policy changes.