This is the account of a mother who lived through the 5-year experience of watching her child fight and finally succumb to a genetic disorder. Lessons about caring practices and insights into the needs of patients and families are emphasized.
OBJECTIVE: To systematically review the accuracy of physicians' clinical predictions of survival in terminally ill cancer patients. DATA SOURCES: Cochrane Library, Medline (1996-2000), Embase, Current Contents, and Cancerlit databases as well as hand…
OBJECTIVES: Develop a prediction model to identify persons who have an increased risk of dying within the next 36 months, in order to focus additional resources and assessment in areas related to advanced care planning. DESIGN: Retrospective study…
OBJECTIVES: Little is known regarding the assessment and treatment of symptoms during end-of-life (EOL) care for children. This study was conducted to describe the circumstances surrounding the deaths of hospitalized terminally ill children,…
BACKGROUND: Intensivists must provide enough analgesia and sedation to ensure dying patients receive good palliative care. However, if it is perceived that too much is given, they risk prosecution for committing euthanasia. The goal of this study is…
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused health care facilities to restrict visitors for patients in all care settings. Most pediatric care facilities have restricted visitation to one parent at a time, unfortunately even if the child is in critical…
OBJECTIVE:
This paper considers clinician/parent communication difficulties noted by parents involved in end-of-life decision-making in the light of linguistic theory.
METHODS:
Grice's Cooperative Principle and associated maxims, which enable…
Advance care planning honors patients' goals and preferences for future care by creating a plan for when illness or injury impedes the ability to think or communicate about health decisions. Fewer than 50% of severely or terminally ill patients have…
BACKGROUND: There is a lack of studies examining the prevalence and severity of psychosocial distress in parents caring for a child with life-limiting condition. More research is also needed to better understand the experience, support needs and…
Few studies have fully explored the problem of communication barriers in pediatric palliative care, particularly the detrimental effects of poor interaction between staff and families on children's health and well-being. A literature review was…
Many terminally ill patients who are able to eat appear to be eating less than they should, losing weight, and becoming malnourished, and many others develop difficulties with eating. These symptoms and signs are usually a marker of advanced cancer,…
OBJECTIVE: To describe doctors' prognostic accuracy in terminally ill patients and to evaluate the determinants of that accuracy. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Five outpatient hospice programmes in Chicago. PARTICIPANTS: 343 doctors…
BACKGROUND: When curative treatments are no longer options for patients dying of cancer, the focus of care often turns from prolonging life to promoting quality of life (QOL). Few data exist on what predicts better QOL at the end of life (EOL) for…
Emergency department use contributes to high end-of-life costs and is potentially burdensome for patients and family members. We examined emergency department use in the last months of life for patients age sixty-five or older who died while enrolled…
BACKGROUND: Research ethics committees are commonly perceived as a 'barrier' to research involving seriously ill children. Researchers studying seriously ill children often feel that committees view their applications more harshly compared to…
Aims:
A systematic review was conducted to appraise and classify evidence related to the life transitions of adolescents and young adults with life-limiting conditions.
Methods:
The databases searched were MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, CancerLit, and…
Research in end-of-life care is constrained more by pragmatic, social, cultural, and financial constraints than ethical issues that preclude the application of typical research methodologies. When normally accepted and ethically sound protections for…
BACKGROUND: For terminally sick neonates and their families, it's crucial to provide holistic nursing care that incorporates both curative and palliative care as much as feasible. It is well known that the biggest obstacle to delivering palliative…
Non-invasive ventilation (NIV) is increasingly being used in hospitals to treat respiratory failure. The use of NIV with palliative intent in a district general hospital is described and ten illustrative cases where NIV was used in an attempt to…
BACKGROUND: Although in-depth interviewing is well suited to studying the sensitive topic of end-of-life decision making, no reports have been published assessing the effects on parents of participating in interviews regarding end-of-life decision…
CONTEXT: Clinicians have observed various patterns of functional decline at the end of life, but few empirical data have tested these patterns in large populations. OBJECTIVE: To determine if functional decline differs among 4 types of illness…
INTRODUCTION: Paediatric palliative care involves the physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being of terminally ill children and their families. Competency in palliative care centred on personal traits and attributes, key abilities to satisfy…
The place of death of cancer patients has become an important theme in UK cancer and palliative care policy. This paper examines the place of death preferences of 41 terminally ill cancer patients and 18 of their informal carers, living in the…
Rarely do paediatric palliative medicine physicians have to break the news of a diagnosis of a life-limiting condition. It is much commoner for us to be faced with the question: "how long?". This cannot be answered with certainty, and yet a great…
CONTEXT: Since the development of palliative care in the 1980s, "do not resuscitate" (DNR) has been promoted worldwide to avoid unnecessary resuscitation in terminally ill cancer patients., OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of a…
The Delphi process, widely used in health research to seek consensus on key issues amongst large stakeholder groups, was adopted to allow families, hospice staff/volunteers and linked professionals to identify and prioritize future research…
PURPOSE: At some point in life, most people become caregivers to a terminally ill relative. Previous studies have shown that many caregivers experience psychological distress and declining physical health, but these studies have predominantly been…
It has been ten years since the case of Hannah Jones-the 12-year-old girl who was permitted to refuse a potentially life-saving heart transplant. In the past decade, there has been some progress within law and policy in respect of children's…
Despite the universality of dying, research has not focused on developing conceptual models and measurement tools for examining the quality of care and quality of life of dying patients and their loved ones. We present here a vision and research…
The legal position of the child as a vulnerable individual requires us as a society to treat them with special consideration in regard to the sanctity of life. In UK law, euthanasia is currently illegal, although there are some moves afoot to have…
BACKGROUND:
Service providers face difficult decisions about how best to develop services for the increasing numbers of young people with life-limiting conditions who require palliative care.
OBJECTIVE:
To explore alternative short break and…
Abstract Background: The experiences of young people who have siblings with life-limiting illnesses are not well understood. Aim: The study proposed to identify the concerns of siblings of pediatric palliative care (PPC) patients. Design and…
PURPOSE: Suffering is a complex multifaceted phenomenon, which has received limited attention in relation to children with terminal illness. As part of a wider study we interviewed parents of children with terminal illness to elicit their…
OBJECTIVE: To obtain feedback from families of children receiving palliative and supportive care about their care needs in hospital and in community settings. DESIGN: A two-phase combined quantitative and qualitative study. SETTING: Western…
BACKGROUND: Palliative care unit (PCU) beds are a limited resource in Canada, so PCU admission is restricted to patients with a short prognosis. Anecdotally, PCUs further restrict admission of patients with noncancer diagnoses out of fear that they…
