Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Dec 2024
Palliative and end-of-life care for patients with pleural mesothelioma: A cohort study.
Pleural mesothelioma is a rare and incurable cancer, with complex physical and psychological symptoms. Despite recent advances in treatment, prognosis remains poor (average 8-15 months) with a lack of research on palliative and end-of-life care. ⋯ Patients with pleural mesothelioma have unplanned admissions to hospital towards the end of life, with possible inequalities; they receive late advance care planning and face challenges unique to their disease. It is important that patients receive high quality palliative end-of-life care through accessing specialist palliative care or have guidance/signposting to other potential sources of support.
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Palliative medicine · Dec 2024
Associations between physicians' personal preferences for end-of-life decisions and their own clinical practice: PROPEL survey study in Europe, North America, and Australia.
Physicians have significant influence on end-of-life decisions. Therefore, it is important to understand the connection between physicians' personal end-of-life care preferences and clinical practice, and whether there is congruence between what they prefer for themselves and for patients. ⋯ Physicians consider their own preferences when providing care and their preferences impact the recommendations they make to patients. Incongruence exists between what physicians prefer for themselves and what they prefer for patients.
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Palliative medicine · Dec 2024
Community out-of-hours palliative care - 'It's a patchwork of services': A qualitative study exploring care provision.
People in receipt of community palliative care usually receive care from a range of services and require access to care 24/7. However, care outside of normal working hours varies, with little understanding of which models of care are optimal. ⋯ This study identifies key characteristics of four common models of out-of-hours palliative care, from the perspectives of professionals. Facilitators of high quality out-of-hours care include: a palliative care specific single point of access for patients; formal structures to integrate generalist/specialist services; and timely/skilled management of symptoms. We provide recommendations for a potential model incorporating these factors.
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Palliative medicine · Dec 2024
Challenges of regional hospice and palliative care networks: A group discussion study with coordinators and network experts.
Within hospice and palliative care, professionals from various disciplines collaborate to deliver comprehensive care to terminal patients and their relatives. Regional hospice and palliative care networks exist in various countries, aimed at facilitating cooperation among health care providers at a local level. To date, little is known about the challenges faced by these networks. ⋯ Sustainable infrastructure, competent network governance and adequate resources for network members are essential for the success of regional hospice and palliative care networks. To improve networking, funding conditions should be simplified, the involvement of network partners should be improved and network coordinators should receive training in network management.
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Palliative medicine · Dec 2024
Co-production in practice: A qualitative study of the development of advance care planning workshops for South Asian elders.
Advance care planning can improve patient and family outcomes; however, minoritised ethnic communities experience access barriers. Co-production offers a way to design culturally appropriate information and support, but evidence is needed to understand its implementation in palliative care. ⋯ Co-production can help widen access to advance care planning. Findings offer an in-depth example of co-production-in-action to inform intervention development and research.