Articles: palliative-care.
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Rev Assoc Med Bras (1992) · Oct 2020
Scientific production in oncological palliative care with emphasis in communication.
Communication is a facilitating tool in palliative care, enabling the development of a therapeutic process based on universal humanistic values, with benefits for the team, cancer patient, and family. This theme is of great importance and highlights the significant contributions to clinical practice in the context of palliative care in oncology with an emphasis on communication.
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Scientific evidence regarding children's understanding of the concept of death is scarce. This has recently been pointed out by the International Children's Palliative Care Network as a priority area of research. In particular, the avoidance of emotion in this area of research is an important shortcoming. This study aims to develop an in-depth view of the emotional dimension of the child's understanding of death, also seeking to relate it to the cognitive dimension. ⋯ This study provides valuable information to health professionals and other interested adults about the way preschoolers position themselves in relation to death.
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Cochrane Db Syst Rev · Sep 2020
Review Meta AnalysisThe effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of hospital-based specialist palliative care for adults with advanced illness and their caregivers.
Serious illness is often characterised by physical/psychological problems, family support needs, and high healthcare resource use. Hospital-based specialist palliative care (HSPC) has developed to assist in better meeting the needs of patients and their families and potentially reducing hospital care expenditure. There is a need for clarity on the effectiveness and optimal models of HSPC, given that most people still die in hospital and also to allocate scarce resources judiciously. ⋯ Very low- to low-quality evidence suggests that when compared to usual care, HSPC may offer small benefits for several person-centred outcomes including patient HRQoL, symptom burden and patient satisfaction with care, while also increasing the chances of patients dying in their preferred place (measured by home death). While we found no evidence that HSPC causes serious harms, the evidence was insufficient to draw strong conclusions. Although these are only small effect sizes, they may be clinically relevant at an advanced stage of disease with limited prognosis, and are person-centred outcomes important to many patients and families. More well conducted studies are needed to study populations with non-malignant diseases and mixed diagnoses, ward-based models of HSPC, 24 hours access (out-of-hours care) as part of HSPC, pain, achieving patient preferred place of care, patient satisfaction with care, caregiver outcomes (satisfaction with care, burden, depression, anxiety, grief, quality of life), and cost-effectiveness of HSPC. In addition, research is needed to provide validated person-centred outcomes to be used across studies and populations.