Perspectives of Vancouver Island Hospice Palliative Care Team Members on Barriers to Communication at the End of Life

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Kirk ◽  
Peter Kirk ◽  
Craig Kuziemski ◽  
Lori Wagar
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Vancouver Island ◽  
Palliative Care Team ◽  
Care Team ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Barriers To Communication ◽  
Hospice Palliative Care

Confidence and skills for cystic fibrosis end-of-life care

2020 ◽  
pp. bmjspcare-2020-002274
Author(s):  
Eva Harris-Skillman ◽  
Stephen Chapman ◽  
Aoife Lowney ◽  
Mary Miller ◽  
William Flight
Keyword(s):  
Cystic Fibrosis ◽  
Palliative Care ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
End Of Life Care ◽  
Further Education ◽  
Palliative Care Team ◽  
Care Team ◽  
Life Care ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Palliative Care Teams

ObjectivesOptimal cystic fibrosis (CF) end-of-life care (EOLC) is a challenge. There is little formal guidance about who should deliver this and how CF multi-disciplinary teams should interact with specialist palliative care. We assessed the knowledge, experience and preparedness of both CF and palliative care professionals for CF EOLC.MethodsAn electronic questionnaire was distributed to all members of the Oxford adult CF and palliative care teams.Results35 of a possible 63 members responded (19 CF team; 16 palliative care). Levels of preparedness were low in both groups. Only 11% of CF and 19% of palliative care team members felt fully prepared for EOLC in adult CF. 58% of CF members had no (21%) or minimal (37%) general palliative care training. Similarly, 69% of the palliative care team had no CF-specific training. All respondents desired additional education. CF team members preferred further education in general EOLC while palliative care team members emphasised a need for more CF-specific knowledge.ConclusionsFew members of either the CF or palliative care teams felt fully prepared to deliver CF EOLC and many desired additional educations. They expressed complementary knowledge gaps, which suggests both could benefit from increased collaboration and sharing of specialist knowledge.

Chaplains working in a hospice palliative care team recount the spiritual challenges at the end-of-life

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Mcafee ◽  
Barbara Cochrane ◽  
Mary Waldron ◽  
Felicity Hasson ◽  
George Kernohan
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Palliative Care Team ◽  
Care Team ◽  
Hospice Palliative Care

Collective soul: The spirituality of an interdisciplinary palliative care team

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHANE SINCLAIR ◽  
SHELLEY RAFFIN ◽  
JOSE PEREIRA ◽  
NANCY GUEBERT
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Palliative Care ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Palliative Care Team ◽  
Care Team ◽  
Cancer Center ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Spiritual Journeys ◽  
Common Goals

Objective:Although spirituality as it relates to patients is gaining increasing attention, less is known about how health care professionals (HCP) experience spirituality personally or collectively in the workplace. This study explores the collective spirituality of an interdisciplinary palliative care team, by studying how individuals felt about their own spirituality, whether there was a shared sense of a team spirituality, how spirituality related to the care the team provided to patients and whether they felt that they provided spiritual care.Methods:A qualitative autoethnographic approach was used. The study was conducted in a 10-bed Tertiary Palliative Care Unit (TPCU) in a large acute-care referral hospital and cancer center. Interdisciplinary team members of the TPCU were invited to participate in one-to-one interviews and/or focus groups. Five interviews and three focus groups were conducted with a total of 20 participants.Results:Initially participants struggled to define spirituality. Concepts of spirituality relating to integrity, wholeness, meaning, and personal journeying emerged. For many, spirituality is inherently relational. Others acknowledged transcendence as an element of spirituality. Spirituality was described as being wrapped in caring and often manifests in small daily acts of kindness and of love, embedded within routine acts of caring. Palliative care served as a catalyst for team members' own spiritual journeys. For some participants, palliative care represented a spiritual calling. A collective spirituality stemming from common goals, values, and belonging surfaced.Significance of results:This was the first known study that focused specifically on the exploration of a collective spirituality. The culture of palliative care seems to foster spiritual reflection among health care professionals both as individuals and as a whole. While spirituality was difficult to describe, it was a shared experience often tangibly present in the provision of care on all levels.

Interdisciplinary Education in Palliative Care: A Bold Strategy, Solution and Political Statement

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Breiddal
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Care Setting ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Palliative Care Team ◽  
Care Team ◽  
Interdisciplinary Education ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Palliative Care Setting ◽  
Political Statement ◽  
Health Canada

Harsh experience reveals that preparing the interdisciplinary palliative care team members cannot be accomplished by sequestering students in single-discipline training. By combining different ways of knowing and being that are the underlying tenets of interdisciplinary education, we must—by design, curriculum, teaching strategies, and research—reflect the nature and practice of the interdisciplinary palliative care team. This kind of education is an imperative if we are going to meet our own goals to provide physical, emotional, and spiritual care to people at end-of-life. As educators, we must take to heart the responsibility to prepare students with the skills to apply their knowledge within the context of the palliative care setting, as practiced by the interdisciplinary team. This position is supported in the literature, is recommended by Health Canada, and is affirmed by experience in the field.

scholarly journals Does a Hospital Palliative Care Team Have the Potential to Reduce the Cost of a Terminal Hospitalization? A Retrospective Case-control Study in a Czech Tertiary University Hospital

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuzana Kremenova ◽  
Jan Svancara ◽  
Petra Kralova ◽  
Martin Moravec ◽  
Katerina Hanouskova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Case Control Study ◽  
Case Control ◽  
Palliative Care Team ◽  
Care Team ◽  
University Hospital ◽  
Insurance Company ◽  
Retrospective Case ◽  
Control Study

Abstract Background: More than 50% of patients worldwide die in hospitals. It is well known that end-of-life hospital care is costly.Our aims were to test whether the support of the palliative team can reduce end-of-life costs and to study the mechanisms of cost reduction.Methods: This was a one-centre descriptive retrospective case-control study. Big data from registries of routine visits were used for case-control matching. We included the expenses billed to the insurance company and added separately charged drugs and materials. We compared the groups over the duration of the terminal hospitalization, ICU days (ICU=intensive care unit), IV antibiotic use (IV=intravenous), MRI/CT scans (MRI/CR=magnetic resonance imaging/computed tomography), oncologic treatment in the last month of life, and documentation of the dying phase.We searched for all in-hospital cases who died in the university hospital in Prague with the support of the hospital palliative team from January 2019 to April 2020 and matched them with similar controls. The controls were matched according to age, sex, Charlson comorbidity index and diagnosis recorded on the death certificate.Results: We identified 213 dyads. The average daily costs were three times lower in the palliative group (4,392.4 CZK per day=171.3 EUR) than in the non-palliative group (13,992.8 CZK per day=545.8 EUR), and the difference was caused by the shorter time spent in the ICU (16% vs 33% of hospital days). This was probably due to better documentation of the dying phase in the medical records.Conclusions: To date, there are sparse hospital data available on the economic aspects of end-of-life care. We showed that the integration of the palliative care team in the dying phase can be cost saving. The evidence that hospital palliative care can save a substantial amount of money can be used to support the integration of palliative care in hospitals in middle- and low-income countries. A multicentre study with the same design is planned in the future to increase the strength of the results.

Differences in end-of-life communication for children with advanced cancer who were referred to a palliative care team

2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (8) ◽  
pp. 1409-1413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alisha Kassam ◽  
Julia Skiadaresis ◽  
Sarah Alexander ◽  
Joanne Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Advanced Cancer ◽  
Palliative Care Team ◽  
Care Team ◽  
End Of Life Communication

scholarly journals Specialist palliative and end-of-life care for patients with cancer and SARS-CoV-2 infection: a European perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 175883592110422
Author(s):  
Gehan Soosaipillai ◽  
Anjui Wu ◽  
Gino M Dettorre ◽  
Nikolaos Diamantis ◽  
John Chester ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
End Of Life Care ◽  
Symptom Control ◽  
Palliative Care Team ◽  
Psychological Support ◽  
Care Team ◽  
Life Care ◽  
Specialist Palliative Care ◽  
Patients With Cancer

Background: Specialist palliative care team (SPCT) involvement has been shown to improve symptom control and end-of-life care for patients with cancer, but little is known as to how these have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we report SPCT involvement during the first wave of the pandemic and compare outcomes for patients with cancer who received and did not receive SPCT input from multiple European cancer centres. Methods: From the OnCovid repository ( N = 1318), we analysed cancer patients aged ⩾18 diagnosed with COVID-19 between 26 February and 22 June 2020 who had complete specialist palliative care team data (SPCT+ referred; SPCT− not referred). Results: Of 555 eligible patients, 317 were male (57.1%), with a median age of 70 years (IQR 20). At COVID-19 diagnosis, 44.7% were on anti-cancer therapy and 53.3% had ⩾1 co-morbidity. Two hundred and six patients received SPCT input for symptom control (80.1%), psychological support (54.4%) and/or advance care planning (51%). SPCT+ patients had more ‘Do not attempt cardio-pulmonary resuscitation’ orders completed prior to (12.6% versus 3.7%) and during admission (50% versus 22.1%, p < 0.001), with more SPCT+ patients deemed suitable for treatment escalation (50% versus 22.1%, p < 0.001). SPCT involvement was associated with higher discharge rates from hospital for end-of-life care (9.7% versus 0%, p < 0.001). End-of-life anticipatory prescribing was higher in SPCT+ patients, with opioids (96.3% versus 47.1%) and benzodiazepines (82.9% versus 41.2%) being used frequently for symptom control. Conclusion: SPCT referral facilitated symptom control, emergency care and discharge planning, as well as high rates of referral for psychological support than previously reported. Our study highlighted the critical need of SPCTs for patients with cancer during the pandemic and should inform service planning for this population.

Interdisciplinary Palliative Care Teams

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-97
Author(s):  
Polly Mazanec ◽  
Rebekah Reimer ◽  
Jessica Bullington ◽  
Patrick J. Coyne ◽  
Herman Harris ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Care Delivery ◽  
Medical Center ◽  
Academic Medical Center ◽  
Interdisciplinary Team ◽  
Palliative Care Team ◽  
Care Team ◽  
Patient Centered ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Palliative Care Teams

This chapter defines the composition and roles of interdisciplinary team members on a palliative care team. The team has the responsibility to deliver patient-centered, family-focused care based on the recommendations from the National Consensus Project Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care. Within this chapter, interdisciplinary team members from an academic medical center discuss their respective roles on the team and describe how these roles supported a patient and family case study. The chapter provides an overview of the four most common models of palliative care delivery: inpatient consult teams, with or without a palliative care unit; ambulatory palliative care teams; community-based palliative care teams; and hospice teams. An introduction to essential considerations in the development of a palliative care team and the important components for maintaining a healthy, functional team are described.

scholarly journals Caring for End-of-Life Patients and Their Families, During Life, and Mourning, in the COVID-19 Era—The Experience of a Palliative Care Team in Portugal

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Mafalda Carvalheiro ◽  
Catarina Faria ◽  
Isabel Semeão ◽  
Sérgio M. Martinho
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Palliative Care Team ◽  
Care Team
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