Articles: palliative-care.
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How do health care consumers, private sector organizations, professionals, and government agencies work toward ensuring quality end-of-life care? This challenge is by no means uniquely Canadian; our approach may thus have applications that extend well beyond our national borders. Raising the profile of palliative care in Canada has occurred on many fronts. Local, provincial, and national efforts in end-of-life care have long been underway. ⋯ Their report, Quality End-of-Life Care: The Right of Every Canadian has seen Canadian palliative care gain unprecedented momentum. The federal government recently took the unprecedented step of creating a new office to represent palliative care within the federal cabinet. In Canada, it would appear that palliative care is an idea whose time has come.
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The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is engaged in field demonstration projects in Latin America and the Caribbean to expand the availability and effectiveness of palliative care services. Workshops and calls for proposals address the multiple causes of inadequate palliative care services that are typical for countries in the developing world. These include regulatory barriers and drug interdiction policies that interfere with the medical use of opioids, lack of education among health professionals, and insufficient palliative care infrastructure.
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Journal of health law · Jan 2001
Glucksberg, the putative right to adequate pain relief, and death with dignity.
This Article focuses on the legality of the aggressive use of analgesics and deep sedation for terminally ill patients. The author analyzes the 1997 Supreme Court decisions on physician-assisted suicide, examines the tension between controversial palliative care practices and the traditional legal framework, and explores the contours of an emerging constitutional right to avoid suffering at the end of life. In addition, the author argues that deep sedation together with withholding of artificial nutrition and hydration should be an option for dying patients suffering from severe physical or emotional pain.
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A working group on teaching palliative care in the home was convened at The National Consensus Conference on Medical Education for Care Near the End of Life. Our consensus statement includes: (1) a justification for education in the home; (2) general guidelines about teaching palliative care at this site; (3) identification of major barriers to training in the home, and some suggestions for overcoming these barriers; and (4) specific suggestions about how and what to teach. We find that the home is an excellent site for training in comprehensive palliative medicine. ⋯ Trainees should learn the potential benefits and difficulties of managing terminal illness in the community, appreciate the role of health care teams in assuring safe, secure, high-quality care, and acquire the special knowledge, skills, and attitudes required for providing state-of-the-art palliative care for patients and families facing a terminal illness in the home, including for those dying at home. Instituting education in the home setting will require faculty development, support for more home visiting by physicians, and supervision of trainees in the home by other members of the health care team. Academic medical centers and hospice/home health agencies should collaborate to develop effective training programs.