Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Jan 2025
Delirium prevention in hospices: Opportunities and limitations - A focused ethnography.
Delirium is common and distressing for hospice in-patients. Hospital-based research shows delirium may be prevented by targeting its risk factors. Many preventative strategies address patients' fundamental care needs. However, there is little research regarding how interventions need to be tailored to the in-patient hospice setting. ⋯ The value placed on fundamental care in hospices supports delirium prevention behaviours but these require adaptation as patients become closer to death. There is a need to increase clinicians' understanding of the potential for delirium prevention to reduce patient distress during illness progression; to support inclusion of delirium prevention in making decisions about care; and to embed routine review of delirium risk factors in practice.
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Palliative medicine · Jan 2025
Randomized Controlled TrialMixed methods process evaluation of an advance care planning intervention among nursing home staff.
We developed the ACP+ intervention to support nursing home staff with implementation of advance care planning. While ACP+ was found to improve staff's self-efficacy, it did not change their knowledge about advance care planning. ⋯ There was limited staff engagement. Management ownership, clear roles, and collaborative practices may enhance nursing home advance care planning. Accessible and ongoing training for all staff, and ample practical learning opportunities are needed.
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Palliative medicine · Jan 2025
ReviewSelf-care towards the end of life: A systematic review and narrative synthesis on access, quality and cost.
Policy and practice encourages patients to engage in self-care, with individual patient management and remote monitoring of disease. Much is known of the moderate stage of chronic disease, without a clear understanding of how self-care applies towards the end of life. ⋯ This review has shown that research on self-care is an evolving area of study, with a current focus on acute care and hospitalisations. Future research should seek to provide a more complete account of the relation between self-care and non-acute care use, and quality, with further efforts to study self-care costs incurred through self-funding.
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Palliative medicine · Jan 2025
ReviewA pragmatic approach to selecting a grading system for clinical practice recommendations in palliative care.
The limited palliative care evidence base is poorly amenable to existing grading schemes utilized in guidelines. Many recommendations are based on expert consensus or clinical practice standards, which are often considered 'low-quality' evidence. Reinforcing provider hesitancy in translating recommendations to practice has implications for patient care. ⋯ It is challenging to apply commonly used grading systems to the palliative care evidence base, which often lacks robust randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Adoption of IDSA-ESMO offers a feasible and practical alternative for lower-resourced guideline developers and palliative clinicians without a prerequisite for methodological expertise.
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Palliative medicine · Jan 2025
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.