Journal of social work in end-of-life & palliative care
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J Soc Work End Life Palliat Care · Jan 2006
The role of social work in the ICU: reducing family distress and facilitating end-of-life decision-making.
The costs associated with Intensive Care Units (ICUs) are high and at times invasive ICU care may not be beneficial, particularly for those patients admitted to ICUs who have little hope of recovery. The process of clarifying medical goals for these patients is often facilitated by addressing psychosocial factors. ⋯ This can not only help improve quality of life for very sick and dying patients in the ICU and their families, but may also reduce the likelihood of decision-making conflicts from arising. Further studies need to be done to investigate the effectiveness of social work interventions in reducing family distress, avoiding care that is unwanted by patients, and demonstrating cost-saving benefits.
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J Soc Work End Life Palliat Care · Jan 2006
Linguistic competence/language access services (LAS) in end-of-life and palliative care: a social work leadership imperative.
Despite the mandated and moral imperative to advance linguistic competence in all health care contexts, leadership that addresses this area of practice and study in end-of-life and palliative care is not readily obvious. Because social work is ideally suited to lead efforts to advance linguistically-accessible end-of-life and palliative care, social workers are encouraged to assume the challenge. This article focuses on topics that are elementary yet central to discussions on language diversity and leadership initiatives to advance language access in end-of-life and palliative care contexts: importance and function of language, extent of language diversity, inequity related to language diversity, mandates and standards related to language access, and approaches and competencies that contribute positively to language access.