Articles: palliative-care.
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Author examines criminal investigations and prosecutions of physicians and nurses in connection with their care of dying patients and concludes that the criminal law has failed to protect patients and families and has significant power to deter appropriate pain management for dying patients.
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Palliative medicine · Jan 1998
Evaluation of a hospital-based palliative support service with particular regard to financial outcome measures.
The object of this study was a financial assessment of a hospital-based palliative support service, to be made by comparing the study group with a matched historical control group and a group of contemporary reference patients. The staff consisted of one full-time nurse supported by a surgeon one half-day per week. ⋯ These three outcome measures all focus on the most care-intensive last months of life and appeared to be sensitive enough to identify economic advantages of palliative care intervention. The palliative support service defrayed its own costs and in excess of that saved another SK17000 per patient (US$2500).
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The family is usually the primary provider of care for the terminally ill patient with cancer or other serious progressive illness. The way in which such a family functions is a major determinant of psychological well-being for its members. Through screening with the Family Relationships Index (FRI) (Moos and Moos, 1981), dysfunctional families and those at risk can be identified, and then helped to achieve better family functioning, thus improving psychosocial outcome of their grief. In this paper, we describe the techniques and themes involved in the application of our empirically developed model of family grief therapy, designed as a preventive intervention for use in the setting of palliative care and bereavement.
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J Health Hum Serv Adm · Jan 1998
Analysis of comfort care for the terminally ill: the hospice approach.
Much of the published literature on hospice care focuses on a single dimension of this increasingly popular approach to meeting the needs of the terminally ill. By contrast, this article takes a broader view by examining the hospice concept and its implementation through the lens of the nine dimensions of the SEPTEMBER model--focusing in turn on each of the social, economic, political, treatment, ethical, managerial, bereavement, education, and research elements. This broader perspective brings together in kaleidoscopic fashion these diverse but interconnected elements of hospice care. This integrated conceptual model helps administrators and health care professionals to develop a clearer overall picture of the multifaceted challenges involved in delivering palliative care to dying patients.