Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2024
'My life is a mess but I cope': An analysis of the language children and young people use to describe their own life-limiting or life-threatening condition.
Children and young people with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions have multidimensional needs and heterogenous cognitive and communicative abilities. There is limited evidence to support clinicians to tailor their communication to each individual child. ⋯ Children and young people can provide rich descriptions of their condition. Paying attention to their lexical choices, and converging one's language towards theirs, may enable more child-centred discussions. Expanding discussions about 'what matters most' with consideration of the losses and differences they have experienced may facilitate a fuller assessment of their concerns, preferences and priorities.
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2024
'So being here is. . . I feel like I'm being a social worker again, at the hospice': Using interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore social workers' experiences of hospice work.
Social workers have a significant role in hospices working with clients who are facing death but there is limited detailed understanding of the emotional impact of this work on social workers. Research has highlighted that those involved in hospice work find the work both a struggle (e.g. because of heightened emotions) and rewarding (noting that end-of-life care can feel like a privilege). ⋯ The results offer an exploration of social workers' experiences of their work in hospices; how adept they were at coping and how they prepared for and made sense of the often emotionally-laden experiences encountered. Their experience of the rewards and meaning derived from their work offers important findings for clinical practice. Further research is suggested to explore a multitude of healthcare professionals' perspectives across country settings using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.