Journal of palliative medicine
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As many hospitals scaled back integrative therapies during the COVID-19 pandemic, we instead turned to the multifaceted qualities of music to bridge physical and social divides. In this report, we describe palliative care music therapists as frontline providers utilizing evidence-based approaches to support healing and recovery for patients in the intensive care unit, patient and family care at end of life, and staff wellness. ⋯ Despite barriers brought on by the pandemic, the sensory and emotional immediacy of music bridged social distances at critical moments and addressed "suffering beyond words" among patients, families and health care workers. Our experience reinforced the need for MT as standard of interdisciplinary care during the pandemic and beyond.
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Pediatric palliative care (PPC) is different from palliative care (PC) for adults. However, conceptualizing PPC remains cumbersome due to the high heterogeneity of often rare diseases, the high diversity of disease trajectories, and the particular difficulty to predict the future of an individual, severely ill child. This article aims to provide an overview and critical reflection of different aspects of prognostication in children with PC needs. This includes different diseases from neurology to oncology, from the unborn baby to the young adult, new approaches in treatment, advance care planning, and, most important, communication with the affected child as well as parents.
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Background: Meeting the needs of seriously ill SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) patients requires novel models of deploying health social workers (SWs) to expand the palliative care workforce. To inform such expansion, understanding the current state of health SWs' core palliative care skills is necessary. ⋯ Health SWs reported a "moderate improvement" in the use of three skills: "identify a medical decision maker," "assess prognostic understanding," and "coordinate care." There was "minimal decrease" to "no improvement" to "minimal improvement" in competence and confidence of skill use. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that educational initiatives can improve health SWs' use of core palliative care skills.
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Background: Many seriously ill patients in need of palliative care (PC) globally never receive it, partly due to a lack of well-trained providers. Objectives: We analyzed feedback from international participants in a U. S.-based PC training course: "Palliative Care Education and Practice" to identify elements of the course that would meet the needs of international learners. ⋯ Results: Key barriers to PC practice change included lack of awareness of PC among local providers, challenges navigating institutional leaders, and a lack of trained providers. Participants requested an increased focus on topics such as resiliency, leadership, and pediatric PC. Conclusions: To address the needs of international learners, PC courses should consider offering a specific track for international participants, as well as an increased focus on topics such as resiliency, leadership development, and pediatric PC.
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Introduction: The Patient Dignity Inventory (PDI) is a reliable screening instrument for a variety of problems (physical, existential, and social) that affect the dignity of patients during their end of life. The PDI has been translated into several different languages and has been validated in different settings. As such, it is important to validate the instrument in patients with cancer in Mexico to assess dignity in this population. ⋯ Conclusions: The Mexican version of the PDI shows adequate psychometric properties in patients with cancer. We suggest the use of PDI-Mx in clinical care and research. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board and Ethics Committee with numbers (016/063/CPI) and (CEI/1115/16) respectively.