This book provides the best information available on the ways priorities are currently set for health care around the world. It describes the methods now used in the six countries leading the process, and contrasts the differences between them. It shows how, except in the UK, frameworks have now been developed to set priorities. Making Choices for Health Care sets forth the key issues that need to be tackled in the years ahead. Descriptions of the leading trends are accompanied by suggestions to resolve outstanding difficulties. Topics include: the need for national research and development funding for new treatments, ways to shift resources permanently towards prevention and chronic care, and how DALYs may replace QALYs. While the concepts and values underlying priority setting have been discussed elsewhere, Making Choices for Health Care highlights real current practice. It is a vital tool for policy-makers, health care managers, clinicians, patient organizations, academics, and executives in pharmaceutical and medical supply industries.

This book presents the current state of the nursing science in topics relevant to the care of pediatric oncology patients and their families across the treatment trajectory and is framed within a precision health framework. The spectrum of topics covered is wide, including, for example, symptom management, self-care management, exercise and physical activity, family-centered care, palliative care, the role of the nurse in treatment decision making, patient and nurse resiliency, survivorship, and genetic counseling. Throughout, there is a focus on the implications of research for nursing practice, highlighting which elements of the available evidence are ready for translation into practice and which are not. In addition, careful attention is paid to the role that nursing can play in further advancing science through clinical research. The authors are leading experts from across the globe. The book will be of special interest for pediatric oncology nurses, including direct care nurses, research nurses, and nursing leaders, and will also be a stimulating source for researchers and non-oncology nurses.

In this moving and compassionate classic—now updated with new material from the authors—hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years’ experience tending the terminally ill. Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts—of wisdom, faith, and love—that the dying leave for the living to share. Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end.

This book examines the dialectic between fictional death as depicted in the media and real death as it is experienced in a hospital setting. Using a Terror Management theoretical lens, Davis and Crane explore the intersections of life and death, experience and fiction, to understand the relationship between them. The authors use complementary perspectives to examine what it means when we speak and think of death as it is conceived in cultural media and as it is constructed by and circulates between patients, health professionals, and supportive family members and friends. Layering analysis with evocative narrative and an intimate tone, with characters, plot, and action that reflect the voices and experiences of all project participants, including the authors’ own, Davis and Crane reflect on what it means to pass away. Their medical humanities approach bridges health communication, cultural studies, and the arts to inform medical ethics and care.

This book unites complementary work in communication studies and nursing research to present a theoretically grounded curriculum for teaching palliative care communication to nurses. The chapters outline the COMFORT curriculum. Central to this curriculum is the need for nurses to practice self-care.

This scholarly volume explores communication at the end of life, emphasizing palliative care and the circumstances of patients in need of such consideration.

For patients and their loved ones, no care decisions are more profound than those made near the end of life. Unfortunately, the experience of dying in the United States is often characterized by fragmented care, inadequate treatment of distressing symptoms, frequent transitions among care settings, and enormous care responsibilities for families. According to this report, the current health care system of rendering more intensive services than are necessary and desired by patients, and the lack of coordination among programs increases risks to patients and creates avoidable burdens on them and their families. Dying in America is a study of the current state of health care for persons of all ages who are nearing the end of life. Death is not a strictly medical event. Ideally, health care for those nearing the end of life harmonizes with social, psychological, and spiritual support. All people with advanced illnesses who may be approaching the end of life are entitled to access to high-quality, compassionate, evidence-based care, consistent with their wishes. Dying in America evaluates strategies to integrate care into a person- and family-centered, team-based framework, and makes recommendations to create a system that coordinates care and supports and respects the choices of patients and their families. The findings and recommendations of this report will address the needs of patients and their families and assist policy makers, clinicians and their educational and credentialing bodies, leaders of health care delivery and financing organizations, researchers, public and private funders, religious and community leaders, advocates of better care, journalists, and the public to provide the best care possible for people nearing the end of life.