Search Tag: End-of-Life
2018 06 Feb
A young woman is brought to the emergency room after being hit by a sports utility vehicle. After 45 minutes of resuscitation, she is pronounced dead. Jonathan Bartels, RN, recalled the case and the vacancy he felt afterwards . It prompted him to develop "The Pause"—taking a few moments after the patient has died, to acknowledge their passing and the...Read more
2016 11 Oct
With continuing shortages of donor organs in all countries, should the dead donor rule be replaced by the “dead enough for donation” rule? The issues surrounding organ donation when the donor is not yet dead were presented by Rik Gerritsen, Chair of the Ethics section of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine at LIVES 2016 in Milan last...Read more
2015 31 Dec
Interview with Professor Daren Heyland The Canadian Researchers at the End of Life Network (CARENET) , directed by Professor Daren Heyland, brings together health professionals from across Canada. The network aims to understand and improve palliative and end-of-life (EOL) care through improving communication and decision making between patients,...Read more
2015 31 Aug
While religious or spiritual concerns are discussed during family meetings in intensive care units, healthcare professionals only rarely explore the patient’s or family’s religious or spiritual ideas. The finding, reported in JAMA Internal Medicine , suggests that understanding how often such discussions take place — and what characterises them — is...Read more
2015 04 Aug
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has produced new draft guidance to improve the care of adults nearing the end of their lives. The guidelines have been proposed as an alternative to the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway, which was phased out in 2014 after a review by the Health Service Ombudsman found serious failings...Read more
2015 04 Aug
The transition to end-of-life care (EOLC) is a difficult process for healthcare staff, patients and their families, whatever the setting. End-of-life care (EOLC) for cancer patients in the ICU has not been frequently studied. A paper published in Annals of Intensive Care as an epublication ahead of print explored the quality of transition to EOLC...Read more
2015 23 Jul
The original Obamacare proposal sought to grant compensation for physicians for providing counselling to patients about living wills and end-of-life care options. The Affordable Care Act, which was enacted in 2010, however, includes no such compensation. The issue has been resurrected when the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced...Read more
2015 18 Jun
Most deaths in the ICU follow a decision to limit life-sustaining therapies and, according to a Loyola University Medical Center critical care physician, doctors have a responsibility to provide recommendations to families of dying patients. Family members or other surrogate decision makers often have no experience in making end-of-life decisions for...Read more
2015 02 Mar
A pair of studies published in the Journal of Patient Safety show "significant confusion" among emergency physicians and prehospital care providers in interpreting the universal end-of-life care documents, called Physicians Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST), which communicate seriously ill patients' choices for life-sustaining treatments....Read more
2015 14 Jan
Results of an Asia-wide survey show that attitudes and practices surrounding end-of-life care for patients in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) varied widely amongst physicians on the continent. The survey covered 1,465 physicians (physician response rate of 59.6 percent), who manage patients in 466 ICUs (ICU response rate of 59.4 percent) in 16...Read more
2014 04 Aug
The death of a loved one is often an ordeal and a tragedy for those who witness it, as death is not merely the end of a life, but also the end of an existence, the loss of a unique individual who is special and irreplaceable. Ethical unease arises as the dying patient falls prey to death throes and to the manifestations of ebbing life and the physician...Read more
2013 05 Jun
At first glance, America is making great strides toward a medical and cultural shift in its approach to end-of-life care: More and more providers are recognizing the benefits of hospice, more people are dying at home, and many health care organizations are institutionalizing the discussions between providers and patients that would help patients...Read more