Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Jun 2014
Impact of a novel online learning module on specialist palliative care nurses' pain assessment competencies and patients' reports of pain: Results from a quasi-experimental pilot study.
Pain is a complex multidimensional phenomenon moderated by consumer, provider and health system factors. Effective pain management cuts across professional boundaries, with failure to screen and assess contributing to the burden of unrelieved pain. ⋯ This pilot confers confidence of the education interventions capacity to improve specialist palliative care nurses' pain assessment practices and to reduce patient-rated pain intensity scores.
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Palliative medicine · Jun 2014
Imminence of death among hospital inpatients: Prevalent cohort study.
There is a dearth of evidence on the proportion of the hospital population at any one time, that is in the last year of life, and therefore on how hospital policies and services can be oriented to their needs. ⋯ Large numbers of hospital inpatients have entered the last year of their lives. Such data could assist in advocacy for these patients and should influence end-of-life care strategies in hospital.
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Paediatric palliative care is still often introduced late in the illness trajectory of children with life-limiting diseases. Translating palliative care into practice continues to be a challenge. ⋯ According to this second step of psychometric testing of the Paediatric Palliative Screening Scale, the strongest and most urgent necessity indicators for a palliative care approach are life expectancy and child/family preferences. These results are somewhat discrepant with results from the previous validation of the instrument as well as previous research findings.