The American journal of hospice & palliative care
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Feb 2018
Compassion Fatigue Among Palliative Care Clinicians: Findings on Personality Factors and Years of Service.
Palliative medicine is a rewarding field, but providers encounter patient trauma on a routine basis. Compassion fatigue, marked by burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and low satisfaction may result. However, professionals differ markedly in how they respond to patient trauma. The objective of the current study was to determine whether personality traits of neuroticism and agreeableness relate to aspects of compassion fatigue, after accounting for time spent working in the field. ⋯ Personality traits of neuroticism and agreeableness may convey risk and resilience, respectively, for palliative care professionals. More research is needed to determine if assessing personality traits can help identify providers at risk for adverse reactions to patient trauma.
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Feb 2018
Expanding the Palliative Care Domains to Meet the Needs of a Community-Based Supportive Care Model.
Whole person care is appropriate for seriously ill persons. The current framework of palliative care domains in the National Consensus Project (NCP) Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care offers an opportunity to reassess the domains of care delivered at home, earlier in the course of illness. ⋯ The preponderance of family-related issues suggests that including the family domain may promote recognition and support of family caregivers and the services they provide. Although this study provides some support for including the legacy/bereavement and legal/financial domains, additional research is needed to determine whether there is a basis for including them in the domain structure.
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Feb 2018
Teaching Medical Students About "The Conversation": An Interactive Value-Based Advance Care Planning Session.
Advance care planning (ACP) promotes care consistent with patient wishes. Medical education should teach how to initiate value-based ACP conversations. ⋯ A value-based ACP educational session using The Conversation Starter Kit successfully engaged medical students in learning about ACP conversations, both professionally and personally. This session may help students initiate conversations for themselves and their patients.
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Feb 2018
"This Is What Family Does": The Family Experience of Caring for Serious Illness.
As the demographics of caregiving in United States evolve toward multigenerational, distributed family structures, the ways in which individuals and their families experience serious illness are changing. As part of a project to create an innovative model of supportive care for serious illness, a series of user interviews were conducted, forming the basis for this article. ⋯ When talking about care for serious illness, individuals report both rewards and challenges, often in a family context. The family enterprise manages a loved one's care, negotiates the health-care system, and adjusts its own internal dynamics. Integrating the family narrative provides a more balanced view of the family system that provides the day-to-day care for individuals with serious illness.
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Jan 2018
ReviewMulticomponent Palliative Care Interventions in Advanced Chronic Diseases: A Systematic Review.
Many patients live with serious chronic or terminal illnesses. Multicomponent palliative care interventions have been increasingly utilized in patient care; however, it is unclear what is being implemented and who is delivering these interventions. ⋯ While there has been growth in multicomponent palliative care interventions over the past 3 decades, important aspects require additional study such as better inclusion of key groups (eg, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, end-stage renal disease, minorities, older adults); incorporating core components of palliative care (eg, interdisciplinary team, integrating caregivers, providing spiritual support); and developing ways to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions that can be readily replicated and disseminated.