Critical Care
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Cultural Sensitivity in End-of-Life Discussions in the Intensive Care Unit
When clinicians treat patients and communicate with families who come from cultures that are different from their own, cultural sensitivity can improve the experience for families.
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Practice Alert Provides Critical Care Nurses Safety Tips for Prone Positioning
The technique that became well known during the COVID-19 pandemic remains a standard tactic for managing acute respiratory distress syndrome.
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Intervention for Critically Ill Patients Lowered In-Hospital Mortality Rates
Researchers believe their work could be a starting place for emergency clinicians to think about novel care delivery models for seriously ill patients.
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Early Communication Can Establish Goals of Care Boundaries
When clinicians initiate the conversation, there can be a better understanding about the wishes of seriously ill patients.
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Ethical End-of-Life Care for Homeless Patients
Clinicians should acknowledge their own potential bias and avoid using language in the medical record that is stigmatizing. Also, they can request an ethics consult before making any decision to not provide care for a patient experiencing homelessness.
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Is Death Imminent? Conflicts Occur if Clinicians Do Not Make It Clear
Poor communication on prognosis prevents the family from making decisions based on the true situation. If surrogates do not realize death is imminent, they cannot plan for hospice care or contact family members to be there for the patient’s last moments.
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Advance Care Planning Can Lower Odds of Aggressive End-of-Life Treatment
Advance care planning was associated with significantly lower odds of indicators of aggressive end-of-life care (i.e., hospital death, hospital admissions, intensive care, delayed hospice referrals, and chemotherapy). Cancer patients who engaged in advance care planning were 50% more likely to complete Do Not Resuscitate orders compared to cancer patients without an advance directive.
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American Heart Association Urges Improvement in Stroke Care
In a scientific statement, the group offered tactics to eliminate the racial and ethnic inequities that exist in stroke incidence, prevalence, treatment, and outcomes.
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Do Race and Ethnicity Affect the Likelihood of ICU Admission?
Patients who identify with racial or ethnic minority groups and present with sepsis or acute respiratory failure are more likely to be admitted to the ICU when compared to white patients.
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Management of COPD Exacerbations in the ICU: What’s New?
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations continue to negatively affect health status, including disease progression and mortality, making optimization of the critically ill COPD patient imperative.