PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To examine how oncology nurses define palliative care, views about who should and should not receive palliative care, and beliefs about palliative care decision making, including who should be involved and how decisions should be managed. DESIGN Qualitative interviews and analysis. SETTING Preferred location of each respondent. SAMPLE 12 nurses representing different as...

BACKGROUND Hospital palliative care consultation teams have been shown to improve care for adults with serious illness. This study examined the effect of palliative care teams on hospital costs. METHODS We analyzed administrative data from 8 hospitals with established palliative care programs for the years 2002 through 2004. Patients receiving palliative care were matched by propensity score ...

Of children needing palliative care, less than half have a malignancy. Most families will elect to care for their child at home if this is offered as a realistic option. The often protracted and unpredictable nature of the many illness trajectories encountered in paediatric palliative care requires an approach that integrates palliative care with curative care. Children bring added dimensions t...

BACKGROUND Palliative care for people with dementia is often sub-optimal. This is partly because of the challenging nature of dementia itself, and partly because of system failings that are particularly salient in primary care and community services. There is a need to systematize palliative care for people with dementia, to clarify where changes in practice could be made.To develop a model of ...

PURPOSE The prognosis for the majority of patients with cancer in Kenya is poor, with most patients presenting with advanced disease. In addition, many patients are unable to afford the optimal therapies required. Therefore, palliative care is an essential part of comprehensive cancer care. This study reviews the implementation of a palliative care service based at the Moi Teaching and Referral...

OBJECTIVE Collaboration between psychiatry and palliative medicine has the potential to enhance the quality of medical practice. The integration between palliative care and psychiatry has been attempted only in discrete medical settings and is not yet firmly established as an institution. Our objective was to determine the availability and degree of integration between psychiatric consultation-...

Palliative care focuses on relieving suffering in patients with serious illness. Patients who receive palliative care have better control of distressing symptoms, are less likely to suffer from depression and have a better quality of life. Although palliative care has become an integral component of health care systems in many developed countries it has yet to be established in most developing ...

Palliative care is the active holistic care of patients with advanced progressive illness, such as those with advanced cancer, end-stage renal disease, AIDs, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD).(WHO 2002) Management includes treatments for pain and other symptoms (e.g. fatigue, nausea and vomiting, breathlessness, anxiety, depression, vasomotor symptoms, xerostomia), as well as th...

BACKGROUND The evolution of the provision of palliative care specialised services is important for planning and evaluation. AIM To examine the development between 2005 and 2012 of three specialised palliative care services across the World Health Organization European Region - home care teams, hospital support teams and inpatient palliative care services. DESIGN AND SETTING Data were extrac...

Despite significant advances in understanding the benefits of early integration of palliative care with disease management, many people living with a chronic life-threatening illness either do not receive any palliative care service or receive services only in the last phase of their illness. In this article, I explore some of the reasons for failure to provide palliative care services and reco...