Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2024
The perceptions of palliative care medical practitioners towards oral health: A descriptive qualitative study.
Oral health problems are common, but often overlooked, among people receiving palliative care. ⋯ To improve the provision of oral health care in this population, this study highlighted the need for oral health training across the multidisciplinary team, standardised screening assessments and referrals, a collective responsibility across the board and exploring the potential for teledentistry to support oral health care provision.
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2024
Co-designing a culturally-sensitive theory-driven advance care planning game with Chinese older adults and healthcare providers.
Advance care planning can be challenging because discussing end-of-life care often has negative connotations. Gamification is a novel approach to encourage advance care planning conversations in Western culture. ⋯ This study is the first to develop an evidence-informed, theory-based, culturally sensitive game for promoting advance care planning in the Chinese community using a co-design approach.
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2024
'My life is a mess but I cope': An analysis of the language children and young people use to describe their own life-limiting or life-threatening condition.
Children and young people with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions have multidimensional needs and heterogenous cognitive and communicative abilities. There is limited evidence to support clinicians to tailor their communication to each individual child. ⋯ Children and young people can provide rich descriptions of their condition. Paying attention to their lexical choices, and converging one's language towards theirs, may enable more child-centred discussions. Expanding discussions about 'what matters most' with consideration of the losses and differences they have experienced may facilitate a fuller assessment of their concerns, preferences and priorities.
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2024
'So being here is. . . I feel like I'm being a social worker again, at the hospice': Using interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore social workers' experiences of hospice work.
Social workers have a significant role in hospices working with clients who are facing death but there is limited detailed understanding of the emotional impact of this work on social workers. Research has highlighted that those involved in hospice work find the work both a struggle (e.g. because of heightened emotions) and rewarding (noting that end-of-life care can feel like a privilege). ⋯ The results offer an exploration of social workers' experiences of their work in hospices; how adept they were at coping and how they prepared for and made sense of the often emotionally-laden experiences encountered. Their experience of the rewards and meaning derived from their work offers important findings for clinical practice. Further research is suggested to explore a multitude of healthcare professionals' perspectives across country settings using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.
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Palliative medicine · Mar 2024
'People don't realise how much their past experiences affect them in adulthood': A qualitative study of adult siblings' experiences of growing-up with a sister/brother with a childhood life-limiting condition and their perceived support needs.
There is a lack of research about the experiences and impact of having a sibling with a life-limiting condition. Studies focus on the sibling experience during childhood but the experience and impact during adulthood is unknown despite the increased life-expectancy of children with life-limiting conditions. ⋯ Having a sister/brother with a childhood life-limiting condition appeared to have a significant and ongoing impact on adult siblings but their support needs, particularly for psychotherapy and peer support, are overlooked. The findings highlight the importance of ensuring siblings are included in family assessments and that family-based interventions are developed to promote sibling-parent relationships.