Palliative care

Background: It is recommended that patients with progressive neurological disease (PND) receive general and specialized palliative care. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of neuropalliative care on quality of life (QoL) and satisfaction with provided care in both patients with PND in advanced stages of disease and their family caregivers. Methods: The sample consisted of 151 patients with PND and 140 family caregivers. The PNDQoL questionnaire was used for data collection.

Informal caregivers are at risk of being overwhelmed by various sources of suffering while caring for their significant others. It is, therefore, important for caregivers to take care of themselves. In the self-care context, mindfulness has the potential to reduce caregiver suffering. We studied the effect of a single session of 20-minute mindful breathing on the perceived level of suffering, together with the changes in bispectral index score (BIS) among palliative care informal caregivers.

Background: Informal carers are essential in enabling discharge home from hospital at end of life and supporting palliative patients at home, but are often ill-prepared for the role. Carers' support needs are rarely considered at discharge. If carers are less able to cope with home care, patient care may suffer and readmission may become more likely. Aim: To investigate the implementation of an evidence-based Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNAT) intervention to support carers during hospital discharge at end of life.

Background: Informal carers play a key supportive role for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. However, caring can have a considerable impact on health and wellbeing. Carers may have unidentified support needs that could be a target for intervention. Literature on the support needs of informal carers has not been fully synthesised, and our knowledge of the comprehensiveness of the Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool for these individuals is limited.

Context: The aging of the world's population increasingly calls on older people to care for their cancer relatives. This scenario confronts clinicians involved with end-of-life care with an imposing challenge: elderly family caregivers could have a different perception of the burdens associated with assistance compared to their younger counterparts. Palliativists need to know what limits and resources of these new age categories of caregivers could be for a global management of dying patients with cancer and their family.

Background: While hospitals remain the most common place of death in many western countries, specialised palliative care (SPC) at home is an alternative to improve the quality of life for patients with incurable cancer. We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of a systematic fast-track transition process from oncological treatment to SPC enriched with a psychological intervention at home for patients with incurable cancer and their caregivers.

The steady advances in oncology bring a host of therapeutic options for older adults (≤65 years old) with cancer. As these patients experience this proliferation of anticancer therapies, their caregivers too have witnessed their role rapidly expanding and evolving as they care for these individuals. To better understand the caregiver experience, a review of the current literature on informal caregiving and cancer caregiving was conducted.

Background: While the impact of family caregiving has been well-documented, many of such studies center on investigating external factors such as socioeconomic status, accessibility to resources and availability of social support as the primary causation of caregiver wellbeing outcomes. This paper explores the motivations that drive family caregivers in supporting their family members at the end-of-life, and critically examines how internal appraisal processes of such motivations can both positively and negatively impact their wellbeing.

Purpose In Northern Ireland, access to good quality palliative care is an accepted and expected part of modern cancer care. The “Transforming Your Palliative and End of Life Care” programme “supports the design and delivery of coordinated services to enable people with palliative and end of life care needs to have choice in their place of care, greater access to services and improved outcomes at the end of their lives”.

Context: Assessing consciousness and pain during continuous sedation until death (CSD) by behavior-based observational scales alone has recently been put into question. Instead, the use of monitoring technology has been suggested to make more objective and reliable assessments. Insights into which factors influence attitudes toward using these monitoring devices in a context of CSD is a first step in formulating recommendations to inform future practice.