We are often asked, How can you do that? How can you stand to do that work? Such a dreary subject. Grim but supposedly necessary. Don’t you get depressed with all the talk of dying?
via The Bereavement Counselor: Public Misperception ~ Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog.
The Spiritual Care Task Force groups: research, implementation, and education work to ensure that spirituality and spiritual care remain at the front of people’s minds and at the heart of palliative care provision. For some, working in small teams or alone, awareness of education resources can be difficult.
Today, most children diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia — the most common type — survive. But in the past, we oncologists significantly underestimated the cost of that survival.
via Treating cancer patients puts everything else into perspective.
Dr. Gitlin is an expert on “person-centered” care for people with Alzheimer’s disease and the originator of a massive open online course (M.O.O.C.) on this condition, which will be offered through Coursera for five weeks starting in mid-October. You can sign up now.
We read with great interest the recent article in your publication by Camilleri et al. (1) as we operate a center for the comprehensive management of patients who have gastroparesis. On a close reading, however, we became aware of several significant concerns that your readers should be made aware of:
Diane Meier, MD, and the Director of CAPC (Center for Advancement of Palliative Care), challenges healthcare professions to view giving bad news as a medical procedure. By that, she means it’s something that takes extensive training, observation, and practice. It’s not something you send a junior resident in to do when the attending is occupied with other things.
Good old Earl Blumenauer. A bespectacled and bowtied Congressman from Oregon. He of the “death panel” proposal. Thank God he’s still here. Presuming that the crazy talk over the provision in the Affordable Care Act that would have paid doctors to discuss end-of-life issues with patients is over, he has introduced a separate bill with this provision and hopes to get it passed in the next couple of years.
via Billing for end of life conversations needs to be an honest discussion.
It’s a tough situation: you have a fatal condition. You require care beyond what family members can provide at home. But with a prognosis of more than six months to live, you are not ready for hospice care.
via Deciding When to Enter a Palliative Care Unit – NYTimes.com.
I am writing this as I return from a UN-based meeting in the USA following up on the meeting at which I was invited to talk about the first Hair for Hospices in 2012. Many remembered my presentation and had participated last year and plan to do so again this year. However, I was very touched by a small number of colleagues who spoke to me privately to tell me of serious and terminal illness that had been diagnosed in their family members since last year.
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