The American journal of hospice & palliative care
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · May 2014
Complementary and alternative medicine utilization in Texas hospices: prevalence, importance, and challenges.
The purpose of this study was to describe the prevalence, importance, and challenges of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) utilization in Texas hospices. Mail surveys were sent to 369 hospices in Texas, and 110 useful surveys were returned. ⋯ Despite the availability of CAM services in most hospices, and that the utilization of CAM has the potential to improve overall quality of life of patients, our results showed that a sizeable proportion of patients in these hospices are not utilizing the provided CAMs. Funding and personnel constraints were substantial obstacles to offering CAM.
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · May 2014
Hospice patient evacuation: a case for using a checklist for safe disaster response.
This study was conducted to provide lessons learned from the experience of a small, rural hospice care organization to an actual crisis that required evacuation of the facility. A process improvement framework using the emergency response certification guidelines was used to first provide details of the incident, second analyze the effectiveness of disaster planning and response in response to an actual crisis, and third discuss the post-event review, lessons learned, and process improvement. This case study revealed 5 emerging themes-disaster can happen at the most inopportune times, facilities should focus on the most likely hazards, written agreements are needed even in small tight-knit communities, redundancy of resources is needed, and disaster planning and response is a process that should be continually improved.
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A secondary analysis of 2 qualitative studies was conducted to explore the experiences of suffering caused by interactions with health care providers in the hospital setting. Interview transcripts from 20 palliative care patients and 15 palliative care informal caregivers in University Malaya Medical Centre were thematically analyzed. The results of health care interactional suffering were associated with themes of attention, understanding, communication, competence, and limitation. These 5 themes may serve as a framework for the improvement in interaction skills of health care providers in palliative care.
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As Americans live longer they are likely to suffer from chronic, life-limiting illness. Because there are not enough hospice and palliative medicine (HPM) trained physicians to care for these people, there have been recent calls to increase the number of HPM trained physicians. ⋯ In addition, NPs are not only numerous, they can provide care that is on par with that provided by physicians. Removal of barriers to NP practice and increasing the quality of their palliative care education/training needs to occur in order to make this suggestion a reality.
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · May 2014
The determinants of patients in a palliative care unit being discharged home in Japan.
In Japan, regarding the place of end-of-life care, many people preferred the home. However, there is a discrepancy between patients' wishes and the actual circumstances. The primary aim of this study was to explore the factors that determine discharge home of patients in a palliative care unit. ⋯ Palliative prognostic index was significantly lower in group 1 than in group 2 (P = .032). Regarding routes of feeding, oral intake was significantly higher in group 1 than in group 2 (P = .043). That is to say, factors determining discharge home of patients may be influenced by the patient's prognosis and the necessity of a feeding device.