Getting end-of-life care right for the child and the family
ICPCN
It has been said that we only get one chance to get end-of-life care right for a family. Francis Edwards was mandated to find ways to prevent children with palliative care needs from ending up unnecessarily on the PICU at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children. He shares the process and some innovative tools that have helped towards achieving this goal.
1st European Roundtable Meeting Report out now
UICC
Co-hosted by the German Cancer Society (Deutsche Krebsgesellschaft) & UICC, the Roundtable took place in Berlin, Germany, on 16 May. It focused on ‘Improving cancer care in Europe – Sharing best practice and learning which institutional structures are beneficial and why,’ inviting participants to exchange ideas around these important topics. This meeting was designed to discuss the decisive requirements to create the optimal quality of cancer care in a given healthcare system.
Challenges in respecting autonomy in end-of-life care of people with learning disabilities
The Netherlands – The Learning Disabilities Elf
Autonomy is defined as the freedom to determine one’s own actions or behaviour. It is a value at the heart of health and social care support and those supporting people with learning disabilities are constantly striving to maintain and indeed increase the autonomy of those they provide help to. The authors of this Netherlands based study were interested in exploring how this works out in practice in relation to end of life care, a time when most people will face increasing challenges to their personal autonomy as they may become increasingly dependent on others.
Casey Kasem and your end-of-life plan
US – Daily Camera.net
Author Katy Butler analyses the much-publicised death of US radio icon, Casey Kasem, and argues that we all need to be more proactive in preparing for the end of our lives. She notes that: “Our advanced medical technologies have developed faster than our moral language for dealing with them, and we risk being caught in the cultural crossfire.”
Euthanasia for children back in the news
ehospice International Children’s edition
The issue of voluntary killing of children has once again been raised, this time in the global bioethics magazine BioEdge. In his opening comment, the editor highlights a story from the Czech Republic on an abstract in a journal calling for babies with severe disabilities to be abandoned to die. Another comes out of Scotland where Together, a children’s rights organisation, has responded to proposed legislation on euthanasia.
Highlights: Celebrating Hospice Week 2014
ehospice South Africa edition
ehospice South Africa takes a look at some of the activities which took place around the country between 4 and 11 May 2014 in celebration of hospice week.
11 strategies to help sustain a community-based palliative care program
ehospice USA edition
Four Seasons in western North Carolina launched a palliative care program to serve patients in both inpatient and outpatient settings. In this article, chief medical officer and medical director, Janet Bull, MD, shares 11 strategies that helped Four Seasons make notable improvements in the financials as well as staff productivity and the quality of care.
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