Articles: palliative-care.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2024
Comparative StudyComparing the Need and Development of Pediatric Palliative Care in Mexico: A Geographical Analysis.
The Global Atlas of Palliative Care (GAPC) ranked Mexico's palliative care services at a preliminary integration stage into mainstream healthcare services. However, this data does not reflect pediatric palliative care (PPC) development. ⋯ PPC services are distributed unevenly across the country, leading to inequitable access to care and an inability to meet the needs of patients and families. There is a disparity between the level of development of adult palliative care services and the underdevelopment of PPC in Mexico. This information can help stakeholders guide the development of PPC where it is needed most.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2024
Frequency of Comfort Care and Palliative Care Consultation after ST-elevation Myocardial Infarction.
ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) remains a leading cause of death despite advances in revascularization and post-STEMI care. Especially for patients with a poor prognosis, there is increasing emphasis on comfort-focused care. ⋯ Transition to comfort-focused care before death after STEMI is common, particularly in those with cardiogenic shock and/or treated with MCS, highlighting the critical status of such patients. Although increasingly employed in recent years, palliative care consults remain rare and are often employed late in the hospitalization.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2024
The Spiritual Dimension of Parents' Experiences Caring for a Seriously Ill Child: An Interview Study.
Parents of children with life-threatening conditions may have to balance their personal, family, and professional lives in the anticipation of child loss and the demands of providing medical care for their child. The challenges these parents are confronted with may lead to specific care needs. In this paper we explore the spiritual dimension of caring for a child with a life-threatening condition from the parents perspective. ⋯ The spiritual dimension plays a central role in the experiences of parents who care for children with life-threatening conditions, but they receive little support in this dimension, and care needs often go unnoticed. If we want to provide high-quality pediatric palliative care including adequate spiritual support for parents, we should focus on the wide range of their spiritual experiences, and provide support that focuses both on loss of meaning as well as on where parents find growth, joy or meaning.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2024
What does "palliative care" represent in research using secondary data?
While much research has been done regarding "palliative care" using retrospective cohort studies of large datasets, the data sources may not be capturing specialty palliative care services. This article aims to clarify what source data are used in such studies, how specialty palliative care services are determined to have been provided or not, and mismatches between the nature of the data and the interpretation of researchers. Major US data sources that are examined include cancer registries such as the National Cancer Database; health systems' internal data; state and nation-level hospital admissions data; and claims data from Medicare and commercial payers. ⋯ Many used cancer registry data and mischaracterized palliative intent for a given cancer treatment as "palliative care services." Dozens relied on the diagnosis code for "encounter for palliative care" which lacks adequate validity for use in research. Researchers, peer-reviewers, and research consumers are cautioned about these potential pitfalls that lead to meaningless or misleading research papers. Suggestions are made regarding more rigorous methods and trustworthy data sources and additional research that can lead to consensus among researchers on these issues.