Articles: palliative-care.
-
Palliative medicine · Dec 2021
Changes in mortality patterns and place of death during the COVID-19 pandemic: A descriptive analysis of mortality data across four nations.
Understanding patterns of mortality and place of death during the COVID-19 pandemic is important to help provide appropriate services and resources. ⋯ Where people died changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an increase in deaths at home during and between pandemic waves. This has implications for planning and organisation of palliative care and community services. The extent to which these changes will persist longer term remains unclear. Further research could investigate whether this is reflected in other countries with high COVID-19 mortality.
-
Internal medicine journal · Dec 2021
Discussion of Advance Care Planning on end of life decisions with lung cancer patients in Wuhan China: Attitude, Timing, and Future Directions.
Progress in advance care planning (ACP) in China has been hindered for decades compared with other countries. ⋯ Chinese patients showed preferences towards ACP, but with inadequate knowledge. More assistance is needed with ACP for those patients, especially for females, patients with one child and those with early stage lung cancer. For female patients and patients receiving treatment, doctors may initiate ACP dialogue first.
-
The integration of palliative care into standard oncologic care has been shown to improve multiple outcomes in patients with advanced cancer. Ideal methods for integrating these disciplines is an ongoing area of discussion. One method of integration is a palliative oncology tumor board (POTB). ⋯ This paper describes a sustainable method to implement a POTB in a community cancer center setting, which is one method of integrating palliative care into standard oncologic care.
-
Palliative care is aimed at patients with incurable oncological and non-oncological diseases and their relatives with the aim of maintaining or improving their quality of life. In order to integrate palliative care into acute care medicine, palliative care training and continuing education for medical and nursing staff is recommended. ⋯ For palliative care, established specialist palliative care services can be called upon for advice and/or cotreatment. Symptom control, treatment of malignant wounds, difficult ethical decision-making, and communication difficulties with patients, their legal representatives or relatives are the tasks of palliative care experts.