BMJ supportive & palliative care
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BMJ Support Palliat Care · Mar 2013
ReviewUsing care profiles as a catalyst for improving end of life commissioning, involvement and service delivery.
In 2010, Liverpool Primary Care Trust successfully pioneered a care profiles approach to commissioning End of Life (EoL) services. They established service requirements for each stage of the EoL pathway, and set out skill mix, delivery, quality and outcomes. This feature sets out how the approach can also support local work relating to Advance Care Planning, palliative care funding tariffs and patient and public involvement. ⋯ EoL care profiles enable local services to be commissioned in detail, which is a catalyst and essential precursor for an inclusive and explicit approach to planning and resourcing services for individual patients and the population as a whole.
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BMJ Support Palliat Care · Mar 2013
Cultural understanding in the provision of supportive and palliative care: perspectives in relation to an indigenous population.
The provision of supportive and palliative care for an indigenous people in Nova Scotia, Canada, was examined to further our understanding and thereby improve cultural competency. Most of Nova Scotia's indigenous people are Mi'kmaq. The Mi'kmaq Nation lives in Atlantic Canada as well as New England in the eastern USA. ⋯ Through reflection on the situation of Nova Scotia's Mi'kmaq, non-indigenous healthcare providers can assess how they might increase their cultural understanding in the provision of supportive and palliative care. Recommendations relate to the health system, relationships with individual persons and direction for research.
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BMJ Support Palliat Care · Mar 2013
Observational StudyWho, why and when: stroke care unit patients seen by a palliative care service within a large metropolitan teaching hospital.
To investigate factors associated with referral of patients from an Australian stroke care unit (SCU) to an inpatient palliative care service (PCS). ⋯ This study indicates there are patient and condition-level factors associated with referral of stroke patients to PCS. It highlights factors that might better stratify hospitalised stroke patients to timely palliative care involvement, and adds an Australian perspective to limited data addressing this patient population.
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BMJ Support Palliat Care · Mar 2013
Interpreting educational evidence for practice: are autopsies a missed educational opportunity to learn core palliative care principles?
UK policy requires undergraduate medical curricula to equip students to care for dying patients. The educational potential of autopsy attendance during authentic early experience to learn about the social context of death and dying has not been fully explored. In this paper the author: (1) explores how meaning is created from autopsies in authentic early experience; (2) compares views of students, curriculum designers and pathology supervisors; and (3) identifies actual/potential learning about death and dying. ⋯ Increasing communication and collaboration between medical school curriculum designers and disciplines such as Palliative Medicine as well as Pathology could address concerns regarding student/doctor competencies to deal with death and dying. Further research is needed to evaluate changes in curriculum design and to establish if similar concerns are found in other settings.