Journal of palliative medicine
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Comparative Study
Sadness, anxiety, and experiences with emotional support among veteran and nonveteran patients and their families at the end of life.
Although many veterans are progressing into older adulthood and a substantive subset of people who die each year in the United States served in the military, there is limited evidence on the role of military service at the end of life. ⋯ Results provide preliminary evidence for veteran status being a risk factor for emotional distress at the end of life, highlighting the possible need for augmented support services for veterans and their families in hospice and palliative care.
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Bereavement is a major life event often leading to psychiatric morbidity. Provision of bereavement care is poorly established in general hospital settings. ⋯ A specialized bereavement service is feasible in a large hospital trust and allows follow-up of relatives with ongoing questions and concerns, with the opportunity of reducing severe grief reactions.
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Two conferences, Creating More Compassionate Systems of Care (November 2012) and On Improving the Spiritual Dimension of Whole Person Care: The Transformational Role of Compassion, Love and Forgiveness in Health Care (January 2013), were convened with the goals of reaching consensus on approaches to the integration of spirituality into health care structures at all levels and development of strategies to create more compassionate systems of care. The conferences built on the work of a 2009 consensus conference, Improving the Quality of Spiritual Care as a Dimension of Palliative Care. ⋯ The 2013 conference built on the 2012 conference to produce a set of standards and recommended strategies for integrating spiritual care across the entire health care continuum, not just palliative care. Deliberations were based on evidence that spiritual care is a fundamental component of high-quality compassionate health care and it is most effective when it is recognized and reflected in the attitudes and actions of both patients and health care providers.
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Despite an increase in the content of palliative medicine curricula in medical schools, students are rarely exposed to end-of-life (EOL) care through real-patient experiences during their preclinical education. ⋯ Hospice volunteering during preclinical years may provide valuable experiential training for MS-1s in caring for seriously ill patients and their families by fostering personal reflection and empathic skills, thereby providing a foundation for future patient encounters during clinical training.