Articles: patients.
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To identify, denote, and structure strategies applied by physicians and patients when communicating information about prognosis. ⋯ The study presents an empirically derived terminology so that clinicians and educators involved in medical communication can increase their awareness of prognostic communication. Based on qualitative data obtained from communication excerpts, we suggest that individual clinicians and researchers evaluate the possible benefits of more frequent use of metacommunication and explicit prognostic information.
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Cross-sectional population-based study using administrative databases, census data, and surveys of orthopedic/neurosurgeons, family physicians (FPs) and patients in Ontario, Canada. ⋯ Prior studies have not addressed the role of patient enthusiasm for surgery. Although patients and FPs had variable enthusiasm for surgery, surgeon enthusiasm was the dominant potentially modifiable factor influencing surgical rates. Prevalence of disease and community resources were not related to surgical rates. Strategies targeting surgeon practices may reduce regional variation in care and improve access disparities.
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BMC palliative care · Mar 2011
Predictors of dying at home for patients receiving nursing services in Japan: A retrospective study comparing cancer and non-cancer deaths.
The combined effects of the patient's and the family's preferences for death at home have in determining the actual site of death has not been fully investigated. We explored this issue on patients who had been receiving end-of-life care from Visiting Nurse Stations (VNS). In Japan, it has been the government's policy to promote end-of-life care at home by expanding the use of VNS services. ⋯ Dying at home was more likely when both the patient and the family had expressed such preferences, than when the patient alone or the family alone had done so, in both cancer and non-cancer patients. Health care professionals should try to elicit the patient's and family's preferences on where they would wish to die, following which they should then take appropriate measures to achieve this outcome.
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This study investigates health professionals' reactions to patients' perceptions of health issues - a little-researched topic vital to the reform of the care of chronic illness. ⋯ Professionals focus on their own resources and the behaviour of other professionals to improve management of chronic illness. They did not factor information from patient experience into their views about systems improvement. This inability to identify solutions beyond their professional sphere highlights the limitations of an over-reliance on the perspectives of health professionals. The views of patients and carers must find a stronger voice in health policy.
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Palliative care is increasingly recognized as an integral component of comprehensive intensive care for all critically ill patients, regardless of prognosis, and for their families. Here we discuss the key role that nurses can and must continue to play in making this evidence-based paradigm a clinical reality across a broad range of ICUs. ⋯ We suggest ways that nurses can help to operationalize an integrated approach to palliative care in the ICU and to define their own essential role in a successful, sustainable ICU palliative care improvement effort. Finally, we identify resources including The IPAL-ICU Project™, a new initiative by the Center to Advance Palliative Care that can assist nurses and other healthcare professionals to move such efforts forward in diverse critical care settings.