The American journal of hospice & palliative care
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Feb 2010
Psychiatric nurses' expertise, interest in end-of-life care, and requests for continuing education on end of life.
The time before dying can be extremely challenging and stressful. Gaps in end-of-life care include inadequate communication, education about end-of-life options, symptom control, and management of common mental illnesses (eg, mood disorders, dementia), and death anxiety. Psychiatric nurses are in a pivotal position to help address these gaps and improve end-of-life care. Psychiatric nurses can facilitate communication about end of life, educate patients about options, and provide consultation, assessment, and management of common psychosocial needs (eg, mood disorders, grief, and loss). ⋯ Psychiatric nurses have skills and knowledge to reduce the gaps in end-of-life care. Many request continuing education to assist them to expand and focus their knowledge to use their psychosocial skills and to develop a specialty area in end-of-life care.
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e-Health has the potential to improve pediatric palliative care. e-Health initiatives use the Internet or health information technology to improve quality of care and have the potential to decrease costs by reducing medical errors, reducing duplication of services, improving access to diagnostic and laboratory results, and improving communication between providers and patients, and so on. The majority of e-health initiatives are for adults and only a limited amount of evidence exists in the literature on e-health interventions in palliative care that are focused on pediatrics. To explore what role e-health could play in pediatric palliative care programs, this article aims to describe the Internet use in general in the United States and in palliative care, describe the use of health information technology in general in the United States and in palliative care, and suggest areas in pediatric palliative care that might benefit from e-health interventions.