OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to learn about experiences of Mexican American and Chinese American families who require pediatric palliative care. This article describes parents' perceptions of information-sharing by health care providers during their…
Objective To investigate the impact of advance care planning on end of life care in elderly patients. Design Prospective randomised controlled trial. Setting Single centre study in a university hospital in Melbourne, Australia. Participants 309…
BACKGROUND: Although pediatric hospice care is commonly accepted as a beneficial intervention, the incremental advantage over end-of-life care delivered without engaging hospice remains unknown. The primary objective of this study was to describe…
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and acute injury in adolescents. METHODS: An analysis of cross-sectional data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) Cycle 3.1 collected by Statistics Canada in 2005 was…
PURPOSE: Many seriously ill patients with cancer do not discuss prognosis or advance directives (ADs), which may lead to inappropriate and/or unwanted aggressive care at the end of life. Ten years ago, patients with cancer said they would not like to…
Recent animal studies suggest links between MeCP2 function and sensitivity to pain. This study investigated the nature and prevalence of atypical pain responses in Rett syndrome and their relationships with specific MECP2 mutations. Families enrolled…
OBJECTIVES: To estimate the frequency of hastening death discussions, describe current parental endorsement of hastening death and intensive symptom management, and explore whether children's pain influences these views in a sample of parents whose…
Quality of life is a common phrase. The majority of human endeavours are ostensibly aimed at improving quality of life, whether for the individual or the community, and the concept ultimately informs most aspects of public policy and private…
Spirituality and spiritual care are gaining increasing attention but their potential contribution to palliative care remains unclear. The aim of this study was to synthesize qualitative literature on spirituality and spiritual care at the end of life…
OBJECTIVE: To describe outcomes and causes of death in children on chronic positive-pressure ventilation via tracheostomy. STUDY DESIGN: We conducted a retrospective observational cohort analysis of 228 children enrolled in an university-affiliated…
This study aims to capture parental descriptions of how siblings take leave of and mourn a stillborn brother or sister and how their parents support them. Data were collected by questionnaires from 16 parents of siblings to a stillborn child one year…
Studies in hospices and nursing homes have shown that a number of different phenomena are associated with the mental states of the dying. In the days or weeks before death the dying person may have premonitions, often unrecognised, of their impending…
Hope is discussed in many literatures and from many perspectives. In this essay hope is discussed from the vantage of psychology and stress and coping theory. Hope and psychological stress share a number of formal properties: both are contextual,…
This article discusses end-of-life issues in critically ill cancer patients. Since the majority of deaths will occur after limiting or withdrawing life support, focus should be given to ensuring that multidisciplinary family meetings are convened to…
Cluster analysis was performed on a diverse group of 69 non-clinical grievers whose loved ones died between 12-40 months prior to the study. Based on psychometric measures of both bereavement distress and growth, three distinct clusters emerged: High…
AIM: To determine the prevalence and associations of self-reported and parent-reported pain in children with cerebral palsy (CP) of all severities., METHOD: Cross-sectional design using a questionnaire; analysis using ordinal regression. Children…
The motor skills of patients with spinal muscular atrophy, type I (SMA-I) are very limited. It is difficult to quantify the motor abilities of these patients and as a result there is currently no validated measure of motor function that can be…
Despite the development and implementation of team training models in geriatrics and palliative care, little attention has been paid to the nature and process of teamwork. Geriatrics and palliative care in the clinical setting offer an…
We studied the frequency and consequences of incidental neuroimaging findings in 400 otherwise healthy, nonacute pediatric headache patients through a retrospective, cross-sectional analysis. We excluded patients with currently recommended clinical…
Restructuring health care in Canada has emphasized the provision of ambulatory and home-based palliative care. Acquiring economic evidence is critical given this trend and its tremendous demands on family caregivers. The purposes of this study were:…
OBJECTIVES: Communication about end-of-life decisions is crucial. Although patients with metastatic spinal cord compression (MSCC) have a median survival time of 3 to 6 months, few data are available concerning the presence of advance directives and…
To determine whether modern medicine is facilitating 'good' deaths, appropriate measures of the quality of dying and death must be developed and utilized. The purpose of this paper is to identify quality of dying and death measurement tools and to…
Bereaved individuals often experience profound social pressure to conform to societal norms that constrict the experience of grief rather than support it. This article explores grief in Western society1 through an analysis of the underlying…
BACKGROUND: There is an increasing trend towards lower participation in questionnaire surveys. This reduces representativeness, increases costs and introduces particular challenges to longitudinal surveys, as researchers have to use complex…
Patients with advanced cancer experience a complex web of problems, all of which interact. Specialist palliative care services have developed to meet these needs, but their effectiveness should be considered. We sought to determine whether specialist…
PURPOSE: We examined utilization patterns of adolescents and young women as they seek general and reproductive health services in physician offices and hospital outpatient clinics. METHODS: We analyzed physician office visits in the 2003-2006…
