Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Jun 2017
'It's not all just about the dying'. Kaumātua Māori attitudes towards physician aid-in dying: A narrative enquiry.
To explore kaumātua attitudes towards physician aid-in dying, to gain a clear understanding of how such attitudes may influence and shape their expectations of medical care at the end of life and to assist health professionals in Aotearoa/New Zealand to address the healthcare needs of older Māori near the end of life. ⋯ The study demonstrated that for these kaumātua, medical practices that hasten death such as physician aid-in dying are 'not all just about the dying'. Tikanga and kawa are important processes and concepts to understand during death and dying, and whānau are central to such processes being respected by those involved in the dying process. These factors are so closely intertwined that they cannot be considered in separation of each other.
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Palliative medicine · Jun 2017
ReviewAssessment of the wish to hasten death in patients with advanced disease: A systematic review of measurement instruments.
Patients with advanced conditions may present a wish to hasten death. Assessing this wish is complex due to the nature of the phenomenon and the difficulty of conceptualising it. ⋯ This systematic review has analysed existing instruments for assessing the wish to hasten death. It has also explored the methodological quality of studies that have examined the measurement properties of these instruments and offers ratings of the reported properties. These results will be useful to clinicians and researchers with an interest in a phenomenon of considerable relevance to advanced patients.
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Palliative medicine · Jun 2017
Randomized Controlled TrialFeasibility of assessing patients' acceptable pain in a randomized controlled trial on a patient pain education program.
For patients with cancer-related pain, the numeric rating scale is the most frequently used instrument to measure pain intensity. In the literature, it has been suggested to interpret patient-reported ratings of pain in relation to the pain intensity which is acceptable to the individual patient. ⋯ Measurement of acceptable pain intensity is feasible. Patients with additional pain treatment became more critical and accepted less pain. More research is needed before we can use acceptable pain intensity as a reference for the interpretation of pain ratings.
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Palliative medicine · Jun 2017
Issues using linkage of hospital records and death certificate data to determine the size of a potential palliative care population.
Studies aiming to identify palliative care populations have used data from death certificates and in some cases hospital records. The size and characteristics of the identified populations can show considerable variation depending on the data sources used. It is important that service planners and researchers are aware of this. ⋯ Health service planners and researchers need to be aware of the limitations when using hospital records and death certificate data to determine a potential palliative care population. The use of Emergency Department and other administrative data sources could further exacerbate this variation.