Palliative medicine
-
Palliative medicine · Sep 2005
The House of Lords Select Committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally III Bill: implications for specialist palliative care.
The Assisted Dying for the Terminally III Bill proposed to legalise both euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide for those with a terminal illness in the UK. A House of Lords Select Committee was convened to scrutinise this Bill and has recently published its report, which will be debated in Parliament on October 10th 2005. The written and oral evidence submitted to the Select Committee represented a wide range of views on 'assisted dying'. ⋯ We have extracted those themes relevant to specialist palliative care practice and present them in this paper. We hope that this will provide a useful resource to inform the forthcoming public debate on assisted dying. The evidence of harms inherent in making such a change in the law, as presented to the Select Committee, has moved all three authors to oppose a change in the law.
-
Palliative medicine · Jul 2005
Review Meta AnalysisSystematic review of hypnotherapy for treating symptoms in terminally ill adult cancer patients.
The aim of this review was to find the evidence for or against the use of hypnotherapy in the treatment of symptoms in terminally ill adult cancer patients. The title and abstract were evaluated following a search through Index Medicus/MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINHAHL, CancerLit, AHMED, Psychinfo, CISCOM, Cochrane and DARE. Search terms included hypnotherapy, cancer, terminal care and palliative care. ⋯ The 27 papers comprised a randomized controlled trial, an observational study, a retrospective questionnaire and 24 case studies. Hypnotherapy was used to treat a variety of symptoms, including pain, anxiety and depression. The poor quality of the studies and heterogeneity of the study population limited further evaluation; further research is required to understand the role of hypnotherapy in managing symptoms.
-
Palliative medicine · Jul 2005
The Norwegian Doloplus-2, a tool for behavioural pain assessment: translation and pilot-validation in nursing home patients with cognitive impairment.
Pain assessment is challenging in cognitively impaired (CI) patients due to inadequate self-report skills and observational ratings are an alternative. The Doloplus-2 is developed for pain assessment in the CI and rates somatic, psychomotor and psychosocial behaviours as indicators of pain. ⋯ The Norwegian Doloplus-2 demonstrates satisfactory criterion validity and clinical value in this pilot study. However, the content of the instrument needs a general re-evaluation, especially with regard to the psychosocial items.