Journal of palliative medicine
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Insights into symptoms and interventions at the end of life are needed for providing adequate palliative care, but are largely lacking for people with intellectual disabilities (IDs). ⋯ Although ID-physicians reported a variety of their patients' symptoms and of provided interventions at the end of life, using adequate symptom assessment tools suitable for people with IDs and continuous multidisciplinary collaboration in palliative care are essential to capture symptoms as fully as possible.
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Although the benefits of palliative care in the outpatient setting are well established, there has been little to support the employing of hospital palliative care services for inpatients with cancer. ⋯ Data to support the benefit of palliative care interventions in the inpatient acute hospital setting are still lacking. Future studies should employ innovative strategies to further this field of research.
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Comprehensive information on end-of-life care in specialized palliative care settings is needed to assess the quality of care. ⋯ These findings regarding the general course of palliative treatments for dying cancer patients are useful for clinical audits in general wards, by comparing end-of-life care. Variations in some end-of-life medical treatments between institutions increased as death neared, even in palliative care settings.
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Assessing and reporting the quality of care provided are increasingly important in palliative care, but we currently lack practical, efficient approaches for collection and reporting. ⋯ Electronic methods for collecting point-of-care quality monitoring data can be developed using collaborative partnerships between community and academic palliative care providers. Feasibility testing and creation of feedback reports are ongoing.
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The goal of this study was to explore healthcare professionals' (HCPs') perception of their role in provision of spiritual care, in addition to attempting to identify a simple question(s) to help identify spiritual distress. ⋯ Despite spirituality being highlighted as important to care, few HCPs felt able to provide this, raising questions around how such care can be encouraged and developed in busy acute care settings.