Articles: palliative-care.
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A specialist palliative care team (SPCT) for the care of terminal cancer patients was established at Forli in 1986. Over the years, its staff and the patients cared for have been increasing in numbers up to the present levels of importance. For 12 years the service was supplied by a private institution, Istituto Oncologico Romagnolo (IOR). ⋯ A plan is being realized to establish a palliative care unit (PCU) within the city hospital. The group has also been engaged in research for many years, giving special attention both to prognostic factors in very advanced cancer patients and to the organization and evaluation of the service costs. Moreover, two training courses in palliative care are organized biennially, one for all health workers in the region and one for volunteers co-operating with the medical teams.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2000
Palliative care consultations: how do they impact the care of hospitalized patients?
To provide a detailed description of the recommendations of a Palliative Care Service (PCS) and to describe the impact of these recommendations on the care of terminally ill patients in an academic medical center, we describe data from all consecutive patients referred by their attending physicians to the PCS of an academic teaching hospital over a 15-month period. All patients were seen within 24 hours of consultation request. Data were collected prospectively on the day of discharge or death. ⋯ Recommendations increased to 5.3 per patient and the implementation rate increased to 97% (5.1 per patient) for the 44 patients transferred to the Palliative Care Unit (PCU). PCS consultations result in multiple recommendations with a very high implementation rate. The number of recommendations and the high implementation rate suggest a strong need for palliative care services within acute care hospitals.
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Retrospective review of prospectively maintained institutional spine database. ⋯ The posterolateral transpedicular approach provides a wide surgical exposure to decompress and instrument the anterior and posterior spine. This technique avoids the morbidity associated with anterior approaches and provides immediate stability. Vascular tumors may be removed safely after embolization. Patients can be mobilized early after surgery.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2000
An international survey of undergraduate medical education in palliative medicine.
A 9-item mail survey dealing with availability and characteristics of undergraduate medical education programs in palliative medicine was sent to all medical schools in Canada (16) and the United Kingdom (UK) (30), and 129 randomly selected medical schools in the United States (US) and Western Europe. The overall response rate was 117/175 (67%). The highest percentage of mandatory (required by the university) rotations in palliative medicine was in the UK medical schools (14/22, 64%). ⋯ Besides the UK, mandatory (required) rotations in undergraduate palliative medicine education are lacking in Canadian, US, and Western European medical schools. The median number of 1 academic faculty member per responding medical school is discouraging. In order for undergraduate and postgraduate medical education in palliative medicine to improve, the number of both educational programs and faculty members will need to be increased.