Journal of palliative medicine
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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.
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Biography Historical Article
Religion, medicine, and community in the early origins of St. Christopher's Hospice.
Commentators on the history and development of hospice and palliative care can appear inclined toward a revisionist viewpoint that sees something "lost" in recent years from the original concept. The thesis concerning the "secularization of hospice" is one such example. It is suggested that the quality of these debates can be improved by serious scholarly attention to earlier events and circumstances, drawing on contemporary source materials, rather than retrospective viewpoints. ⋯ It shows how Cicely Saunders and her associates created an Aim and Basis for the hospice that sought to reconcile questions about its religious orientation; its relationship to medicine; and its status as a community. We see how tensions between these were resolved, resulting in a model that would be applicable in other contexts. Without this pragmatic turn, it is unlikely that the hospice movement would have spread so quickly and so far in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Place of care in advanced cancer: a qualitative systematic literature review of patient preferences.
It is commonly written that more patients wish to die at home than currently achieve this. However, the evidence for preferences for place of terminal care and death has not been systematically reviewed. ⋯ Home care is the most common preference, with inpatient hospice care as second preference in advanced illness. Meeting these preferences could be important outcomes for services. Study designs in this area need to be improved.
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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/