scholarly journals Palliative Care Unit of Wakayama Medical University Hospital

2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-17
Author(s):  
Yoshi TSUKIYAMA ◽  
Yoshio HATANO
2020 ◽  
pp. 1321-1327
Author(s):  
Quang V. Le ◽  
Huy L. Trinh ◽  
Kim Ngan T. Mai ◽  
Manh D. Pham ◽  
Paul A. Glare

PURPOSE To evaluate a screening tool for identifying which patients admitted to the oncology ward of a Vietnamese hospital should be referred to specialist palliative care (PC). METHODS We performed a cross-sectional survey of consecutive patients hospitalized in the Department of Oncology and Palliative Care at Hanoi Medical University Hospital between June 2019 and September 2019. We translated a validated 11-item screening tool into Vietnamese and used a total score of ≥ 5 as a positive screen. RESULTS One hundred participants were recruited. Forty-four patients (44%) screened positive. Of these, 37 (84%) had locally advanced or metastatic disease, 31 (70%) had uncontrolled symptoms, and 43 (98%) requested a PC consultation. A score ≥ 5 was significantly more common in patients with stage IV disease versus earlier stage, performance status of Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) 2 versus ECOG 0, and when life-limiting complications of cancer were present. Screening identified four patients overlooked by oncologists as needing referral, and 34% of patients requesting a referral had scores < 5. CONCLUSION This screening tool provided oncologists with easy-to-use criteria for referring patients for PC. At the same time, it relieved the work load for under-resourced PC physicians by screening out requests with low-level need. This tool should be part of routine assessment on admission in all oncology units in Vietnam.


2020 ◽  
pp. 003022282095218
Author(s):  
Frédérique Drillaud ◽  
Camille Saussac ◽  
Florence Keusch ◽  
Danièle Lafaye ◽  
Hélène Bely ◽  
...  

The WHO has included the spiritual dimension in its definition of palliative care since 1990, but this dimension is frequently confused with notions of religion. Yet, the spiritual suffering experienced by palliative care patients is primarily a matter of existential suffering. The objective of this study was to examine the ways in which the existential dimension was manifested in the experiences of those present in a palliative care unit. This anthropological monograph was conducted in a palliative care unit in a French University Hospital. The existential dimension appears to reside in the connections between individuals and the proximity of death appears to shed new light on the meaning of life. The mirror effect of death on life, could serve to encourage greater appreciation of the value of our connections with others, and the desire to take care of others, which offers new insight into forms of solidarity and social organisation.


10.2196/24305 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. e24305
Author(s):  
Yu-Jiun Lin ◽  
Ray-Jade Chen ◽  
Jui-Hsiang Tang ◽  
Cheng-Sheng Yu ◽  
Jenny L Wu ◽  
...  

Background Patients with end-stage liver disease (ESLD) have limited treatment options and have a deteriorated quality of life with an uncertain prognosis. Early identification of ESLD patients with a poor prognosis is valuable, especially for palliative care. However, it is difficult to predict ESLD patients that require either acute care or palliative care. Objective We sought to create a machine-learning monitoring system that can predict mortality or classify ESLD patients. Several machine-learning models with visualized graphs, decision trees, ensemble learning, and clustering were assessed. Methods A retrospective cohort study was conducted using electronic medical records of patients from Wan Fang Hospital and Taipei Medical University Hospital. A total of 1214 patients from Wan Fang Hospital were used to establish a dataset for training and 689 patients from Taipei Medical University Hospital were used as a validation set. Results The overall mortality rate of patients in the training set and validation set was 28.3% (257/907) and 22.6% (145/643), respectively. In traditional clinical scoring models, prothrombin time-international normalized ratio, which was significant in the Cox regression (P<.001, hazard ratio 1.288), had a prominent influence on predicting mortality, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve reached approximately 0.75. In supervised machine-learning models, the concordance statistic of ROC curves reached 0.852 for the random forest model and reached 0.833 for the adaptive boosting model. Blood urea nitrogen, bilirubin, and sodium were regarded as critical factors for predicting mortality. Creatinine, hemoglobin, and albumin were also significant mortality predictors. In unsupervised learning models, hierarchical clustering analysis could accurately group acute death patients and palliative care patients into different clusters from patients in the survival group. Conclusions Medical artificial intelligence has become a cutting-edge tool in clinical medicine, as it has been found to have predictive ability in several diseases. The machine-learning monitoring system developed in this study involves multifaceted analyses, which include various aspects for evaluation and diagnosis. This strength makes the clinical results more objective and reliable. Moreover, the visualized interface in this system offers more intelligible outcomes. Therefore, this machine-learning monitoring system provides a comprehensive approach for assessing patient condition, and may help to classify acute death patients and palliative care patients. Upon further validation and improvement, the system may be used to help physicians in the management of ESLD patients.


Author(s):  
Atsushi Shimizu ◽  
Mitsue Takeuchi ◽  
Fumio Kurosaki ◽  
Kaichiro Tamba ◽  
Naohiro Sata ◽  
...  

Background: Physician attire influences perceptions of care. This study was conducted to evaluate the impact of physician attire on perceptions of care by patients and families in a Japanese palliative care unit. Methods: From November 2018 to February 2020, patients and family members admitted to the Palliative Care Unit at Jichi Medical University Hospital were recruited and completed a survey consisting of 4 demographic questions and 15 questions regarding perceptions of care. A 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly agree, 4 = neutral, 7 = strongly disagree) was used to judge attire (name tag, long sleeve white coat, short sleeve white coat, scrubs, scrub color, jeans, sneakers) addressing patient and overall impact on perception of care. Results: Of 203 patients admitted, 79 were enrolled. Surveys were received from 23 patients and 52 family members. Patients and families want physicians to wear name tags (median, interquartile range) (2, 1-2) and white coats (3, 2-4). Patients want to be addressed by surnames (2, 1.5-4). Patients and family members have neutral opinions about short sleeve white coats (4, 4-4) and scrubs (4, 4-4). Jeans were not liked (4, 4-6) while sneakers are acceptable (3, 2-4). The impact of attire on perceptions of care is significantly (p = .04) greater for patients (3, 2-4) than family members (4, 3-4). Conclusion: Patients and family members prefer their physicians to wear name tags and white coats and address patients by surnames. Physician attire has a significantly greater impact on perceptions of care for patients than family members in a palliative care unit.


Author(s):  
Josiane Létourneau ◽  
Marie Alderson

Contexte : Les difficultés rencontrées pour améliorer les taux d'adhésion à l'hygiène des mains des infirmières suggèrent que de modifier ce comportement est une tâche complexe. Une approche novatrice - la déviance positive - propose de déterminer la présence d’individus plus performants afin de comprendre les facteurs qui pourraient expliquer cette meilleure performance. Le but de cette étude était d’explorer, sous l’angle de l’approche de la déviance positive, les facteurs qui influencent la pratique de l’hygiène des mains des infirmières en contexte hospitalier québécois. Méthode : Deux ethnographies focalisées ont été effectuées auprès de 21 infirmières sur une unité de médecine-chirurgie et une de soins palliatifs d’un centre hospitalier universitaire de Montréal. La collecte des données s’est déroulée en 2015, principalement lors de 18 entrevues individuelles et 14 périodes d’observation. Les données colligées ont été codées et regroupées sous des catégories. Résultats : Au niveau individuel, les participantes reconnaissent l’importance des connaissances sur le rôle de l’hygiène des mains dans la prévention des infections. Au niveau organisationnel, on constate une pratique collaborative à l’intérieur de chacune des équipes de soins. Au niveau environnemental, la disponibilité des distributeurs de solution hydro-alcoolique facilite la pratique de l’hygiène des mains. Au niveau socioculturel, les deux équipes travaillent ensemble vers un but commun, ce que nous avons nommé cohésion sociale, favorisée sur l’unité de médecine-chirurgie par le leadership de son infirmier-chef et sur l’unité des soins palliatifs par une pratique de soins empreinte d’humanisme. Discussion/Conclusion : Les connaissances découlant de cette étude permettent de comprendre qu’afin d’améliorer l’adhésion à l’hygiène des mains des infirmières, il serait préférable de cibler les équipes de soins qui performent le mieux afin d’y puiser des idées pour aider celles avec une moins bonne performance et d’élaborer des interventions qui intègrent des facteurs à plusieurs niveaux, non seulement au niveau individuel, mais aussi aux niveaux organisationnels, environnementaux et socioculturels. Background: Challenges encountered in improving nurses’ hand hygiene adherence rates suggest that changing this behavior is a complex task. An innovative approachpositive deviance-propose to identify better-performing individuals in order to understand the factors that could explain their better performance. The aim of this study was to investigate the factors influencing nurses’ hand hygiene practices at a Quebec hospital from the perspective of positive deviance. Method: Two focused ethnographies were conducted involving 21 nurses on one medical-surgery unit and one palliative care unit at a Montreal university hospital. Data was collected in 2015, primarily during 18 individual interviews and 14 observation periods. The collected data was coded and sorted into categories. Results: At an individual level, the participants recognized the importance of knowledge of the role of hand hygiene in the prevention of infections. At the organizational level, we observed collaborative practices within each care team. At the environmental level, the availability of alcohol-based hand hygiene dispensers facilitated hand hygiene practice. At the sociocultural level, the two teams worked together towards a common goal, a practice we refer to as social cohesion, encouraged on the medicalsurgery unit by the head nurse’s leadership and on the palliative care unit by a humanistic care practice. Discussion/conclusion: The knowledge gained from this study shows that, to improve nurses’ hand hygiene adherence, it would be preferable to target better-performing care teams so that we may draw on their ideas to help less performing teams and develop interventions integrating factors at several levels, not only individually but also organizationally, environmentally and socio-culturally.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Jiun Lin ◽  
Ray-Jade Chen ◽  
Jui-Hsiang Tang ◽  
Cheng-Sheng Yu ◽  
Jenny L Wu ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Patients with end-stage liver disease (ESLD) have limited treatment options and have a deteriorated quality of life with an uncertain prognosis. Early identification of ESLD patients with a poor prognosis is valuable, especially for palliative care. However, it is difficult to predict ESLD patients that require either acute care or palliative care. OBJECTIVE We sought to create a machine-learning monitoring system that can predict mortality or classify ESLD patients. Several machine-learning models with visualized graphs, decision trees, ensemble learning, and clustering were assessed. METHODS A retrospective cohort study was conducted using electronic medical records of patients from Wan Fang Hospital and Taipei Medical University Hospital. A total of 1214 patients from Wan Fang Hospital were used to establish a dataset for training and 689 patients from Taipei Medical University Hospital were used as a validation set. RESULTS The overall mortality rate of patients in the training set and validation set was 28.3% (257/907) and 22.6% (145/643), respectively. In traditional clinical scoring models, prothrombin time-international normalized ratio, which was significant in the Cox regression (<i>P</i>&lt;.001, hazard ratio 1.288), had a prominent influence on predicting mortality, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve reached approximately 0.75. In supervised machine-learning models, the concordance statistic of ROC curves reached 0.852 for the random forest model and reached 0.833 for the adaptive boosting model. Blood urea nitrogen, bilirubin, and sodium were regarded as critical factors for predicting mortality. Creatinine, hemoglobin, and albumin were also significant mortality predictors. In unsupervised learning models, hierarchical clustering analysis could accurately group acute death patients and palliative care patients into different clusters from patients in the survival group. CONCLUSIONS Medical artificial intelligence has become a cutting-edge tool in clinical medicine, as it has been found to have predictive ability in several diseases. The machine-learning monitoring system developed in this study involves multifaceted analyses, which include various aspects for evaluation and diagnosis. This strength makes the clinical results more objective and reliable. Moreover, the visualized interface in this system offers more intelligible outcomes. Therefore, this machine-learning monitoring system provides a comprehensive approach for assessing patient condition, and may help to classify acute death patients and palliative care patients. Upon further validation and improvement, the system may be used to help physicians in the management of ESLD patients.


2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (11) ◽  
pp. 642-648
Author(s):  
Samantha Aeckerle ◽  
Marina Moor ◽  
Lothar R. Pilz ◽  
Deniz Gencer ◽  
Ralf-Dieter Hofheinz ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-179
Author(s):  
Peter A. Selwyn

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