Journal of palliative medicine
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Medical errors have recently been recognized as a relevant concern in public health, and increasing research efforts have been made to find ways of improving patient safety. In palliative care, however, studies on errors are scant. ⋯ Professionals acknowledge errors-in particular errors in communication-to be a common and relevant problem in palliative care, one that has, however, been neglected in training and research.
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Called in after discussions about prognosis between referring clinicians and patients, palliative care consultants sometimes find that the patient does not seem to understand what the referring clinician believes he or she explained. However, holding a more explicit discussion about prognosis may compromise the palliative care clinician's rapport with both the patient and the referring clinician. We therefore propose a two-part approach to explore apparent prognostic misunderstandings: first, generate a differential diagnosis for why the patient and referring clinician have different reports of what was said, and second, cultivate a partnership with the referring clinician to provide a unified patient care plan.
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Despite the fact that most deaths occur in hospital, problems remain with how patients and families experience care at the end of life when a death occurs in a hospital. ⋯ The ISC scale demonstrated good content validity and reliability. The ISC scale offers acute care organizations a means to assess the quality of information sharing and communication that transpires in care at the end of life.