Journal of palliative medicine
-
Within the academic medical center providing interdisciplinary, experiential, longitudinal, and mentored learning experiences for students regarding hospice/end-of-life care is a considerable challenge. This article describes an innovative course for medical, nursing, and social work students taught as a partnership among the departments of family medicine, medical history/ethics and three community hospice programs. ⋯ Achieving these goals is challenging for students (especially medical students) and faculty but highly rewarding. The development, implementation and evolution over the past 3 years of this hospice volunteer training course are discussed.
-
At Children's Hospital of Wisconsin there is a pediatric palliative care consultation service that serves a diverse patient population, including infants. However, the value of a palliative care consultation for infants has not been well evaluated. We performed a retrospective, case series, descriptive chart review of infants in our neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) who received palliative care consults between January 1996 and June 1998. ⋯ Recommendations that the palliative care staff made fell into four categories: advance directive planning, the optimal environment for supporting neonatal death, comfort and medical care, and psychosocial support. This series is a description of what a palliative care service can offer for terminally ill infants in an NICU. We speculate that such consults can more consistently and comprehensively provide appropriate end-of-life care for these patients and their families.
-
This article by the hospice case manager and inmate volunteer coordinator at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP) hospice program describes the program's major features, how it was started and is sustained within the confines and culture of prison life, and how the challenges to implementing a hospice program within a maximum security prison continue to be met. Recommendations are offered for undertaking a hospice initiative in a correctional facility. The LSP Hospice Program was honored in May 2000 with the Circle of Life Award from the American Hospital Association. This article is excerpted from a thematic issue, "Hospice in Prison," Volume 2, Number 3, 2000 of the online journal, Innovations in End-of-Life Care at http://www.edc.org/lastacts/