Journal of palliative medicine
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Background: Early integration of palliative care (PC) for patients with heart failure (HF) improves patient outcomes and decreases health care utilization. PC provided outside of an acute hospitalization is not well understood. Objective: To synthesize the literature of outpatient PC in HF to identify the current landscape, the impact on patient health outcomes, key stakeholders' perspectives, and future implications for research and practice. ⋯ The structural, physical, and psychological domains were commonly addressed, whereas, least commonly addressed domains were the cultural and ethical/legal domain. Women and ethnic minorities were underrepresented in the majority of samples. Conclusions: This integrative review highlights the need to promote primary PC and future PC research focusing on a holistic, integrated, team-based approach addressing all domains of PC in representative samples.
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Review
Training to Reduce Home Care Aides' Work Stress Associated with Patient Death: A Scoping Review.
Background: Home care workers (HCWs)-including home health aides, personal care aides, and other direct care workers-provide functional and other essential support that allows older, disabled, and seriously ill people to live at home. As a growing number of patients are aging and dying at home, HCWs are increasingly providing care at the end of life (EOL). Although prior qualitative studies have shown that patient death is an impactful and challenging experience for HCWs, the majority of HCWs receive almost no training on EOL issues. Objective: The goal of this scoping review is to identify intervention studies describing training of HCWs in EOL issues to map types of training and to assess the degree to which existing efforts address HCW health and well-being. Design: Our scoping review covered three databases and focused on articles published in English since 2000. Results: Of the 393 articles screened, 26 underwent full-text review and 6 met inclusion criteria. ⋯ Other trainings simultaneously targeted multiple kinds of workers. Supporting HCWs in reducing their stress and improving their coping skills was substantially addressed in only one article, although HCWs' emotional needs were addressed less centrally in several others. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that there is a paucity of EOL training interventions tailored specifically to the experiences and positioning of HCWs. We recommend that future intervention studies address the multiple facets of HCWs' stress related to patient death to improve EOL care in the home.