Articles: palliative-care.
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Palliative medicine · Oct 2022
Is the use of palliative care services increasing? A comparison of current versus historical palliative care access using health service datasets for patients with cancer.
Mature evidence exists supporting the integration of palliative care in cancer care, but translation of evidence into practice is less well understood. ⋯ Despite established benefits of early palliative care, the important task of translation of this evidence into practice remains.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2022
Using Family Narrative Reports to Identify Practices for Improving End-of-Life Care Quality.
Patient experiences should be considered by healthcare systems when implementing care practices to improve quality of end-of-life care. Families and caregivers of recent in-patient decedents may be best positioned to recommend practices for quality improvement. ⋯ Narrative responses from bereaved family members can yield approaches for systematic quality improvement. These approaches can serve as a menu in diverse contexts looking for approaches to improve patient quality of death in in-patient settings.
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Palliative care (PC) teams commonly encounter patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) following anoxic or traumatic brain injury (TBI). Primary teams may consult PC to help surrogates in making treatment choices for these patients. ⋯ The purpose of this article was to provide PC providers with a better understanding of caring for patients with DOC, specifically following anoxic or TBI. Many of the tips acknowledge the uncertainty of DOC and provide strategies to help tackle this dilemma.
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Background: The hospice benefit can improve end-of-life outcomes, but is underutilized, particularly in low enrollment states such as New York. Little is known about this underutilization. Objective: The first part of a mixed-methods study aimed to compile and rank barriers to hospice utilization and identify differences between New York and the rest of the United States. ⋯ Thematic analysis highlighted 14 barriers important in New York and suggested 11 interventions to improve hospice access. Conclusions: A categorization and ranking of barriers may guide future interventions to improve low hospice utilization. Novel studies with heterogeneous stakeholders are needed.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2022
Considerations for Fostering Palliative Care Awareness in Developing Contexts: Strategies from Locally Initiated Projects in India.
Lack of palliative care (PC) awareness is a barrier to its utilization in developing contexts. ⋯ To increase palliative care utilization, program development can include community and provider-focused efforts on awareness of the concepts and value of palliative care. These three strategies held salience across sites representing diverse Indian geographic and cultural settings; as such, they may be applicable to other contexts.