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When Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City began looking at implementing palliative care and end-of-life services, the case management department was the appropriate place to start, says Anita Bell, RN, MEd CHPN, palliative care coordinator at the 508-bed facility.
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In recent years, cardiac devices have become a factor in end-of-life decision-making for ethics consultants. When do you turn off a cardiac device that may keep a patient alive after, for example, the patient has become comatose?
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Influenza vaccination of healthcare personnel is a professional and ethical responsibility and non-compliance with healthcare facility policies regarding vaccination should not be tolerated, argues the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA).
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The boarding of patients in hospital emergency departments occurs every day across the country and is not atypical, experts suggest.
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If they were better informed on the outcomes of premature infants, physicians might be more inclined to intervene more often, according to Annie Janvier, MD, PhD, FRCPC, a neonatologist and clinical ethicist practicing at St. Justine Hospital in Quebec and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Montreal.
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A bill recently signed into law in New York state will require a patient's health care provider to provide information and counseling to that patient on palliative care, prognosis, and end-of-life options, once the patient is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
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Rabbi Barry M. Kinzbrunner, MD, suggests that in addressing spiritual care for their patients at the end of life, physicians often face the challenge of how to mesh the spiritual concerns with objective science a challenge that sometimes results in a "significant disconnect" with patients.
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A study published in mid-August in the New England Journal of Medicine found that in patients with metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer, "early palliative care led to significant improvements in both quality of life and mood," according to the abstract.
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Jeanne S. Twohig, MPA, senior advisor, Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, unabashedly asserted that there is a crisis in our country as to the quality of the vision for our health care futures.
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It's not unusual for soldiers who have returned from war never to discuss the war with their families or friends, creating an aura of mystery or a sense that their loved ones somehow cannot fully understand them now that they have returned to civilian life.