Palliative medicine
-
Palliative medicine · Jan 2016
Student nurses' experience of and attitudes towards care of the dying: A cross-sectional study.
Nurses are the professional group with the greatest contact with those at the end of life and their attitudes towards the care of the dying is important in care delivery. ⋯ The length of time in education and practical experience of caring for dying individuals are independently associated with positive attitudes towards care of the dying among student nurses.
-
Palliative medicine · Jan 2016
Home care by general practitioners for cancer patients in the last 3 months of life: An epidemiological study of quality and associated factors.
Stronger generalist end-of-life care at home for people with cancer is called for but the quality of end-of-life care delivered by general practitioners has been questioned. ⋯ There is considerable room for improvement in the satisfaction with home care provided by general practitioners to terminally ill cancer patients. Ensuring an adequate offer of home visits by general practitioners may help to achieve this goal.
-
Palliative medicine · Dec 2015
Comparative StudyAn international comparison of costs of end-of-life care for advanced lung cancer patients using health administrative data.
Patterns of end-of-life cancer care differ in Canada and the United States; yet little is known about differences in service-specific and overall costs. ⋯ Costs for nonsmall cell lung cancer patients were slightly higher in the United States than Ontario until 1 month before death. Administrative data allow exploration and international comparisons of reimbursement policies, health-care delivery, and costs at the end of life.
-
Palliative medicine · Dec 2015
Delirium as letting go: An ethnographic analysis of hospice care and family moral experience.
Delirium is extremely common in dying patients and appears to be a major threat to the family's moral experience of a good death in end-of-life care. ⋯ Within hospice culture, there is usefulness to deemphasizing delirium as a pathological neuropsychiatric complication, in favor of acknowledging delirious changes as signs of normal dying. This has implications for how we understand the role of nurses and other caregivers with respect to delirium assessment and care, which to date has focused largely on practices of screening and management.