This comprehensive pocket-size handbook is the essential reference for clinicians and others serving patients with advanced or life-limiting illness. It offers up-to-date, relevant, and highly practical guidance to expertly meet the challenges of serving these patients and their families. This user-friendly manual emphasizes the importance of honoring patients' wishes throughout their medical journey while meeting their whole-person, often complex needs-from symptom management to attending to spiritual and emotional suffering-and always acknowledges the context of patients' lives, including the needs of loved ones supporting them. The layout makes finding information quick and easy, with alphabetically organized chapter headings and a detailed index. Organ-system-based chapters offer disease-specific, goals-of-care discussion guidance and reviews of etiology, signs and symptoms, assessment, and management-including standard treatment as well as palliative options. Other chapters cover communication with patients and families, consultation with colleagues, and code status discussions, along with valuable subjects such as withdrawing life support, ethics, spirituality, physician-assisted death, and palliative options of last resort. Readers will find practical management strategies for symptoms such as pain, nausea, dyspnea, and delirium. In addition, chapters on opioid use and dosing, and pharmacology of commonly used palliative medications, make this guide an invaluable resource.

Offers a comprehensive overview of the practice of hospice, as well as the challenges faced by and the direction of the hospice movement. This book provides chapters that address key topics such as the goals and importance of community involvement, outcome measurement, and the manner in which hospices address death, grief, and bereavement.

The Oxford American Handbook of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and Supportive Care provides succinct, evidence-based, topically-focused content on the day-to-day management of patients requiring palliative and hospice care. The text is supplemented by extensive tables, algorithms, and clinical pearls.

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.

Hospice and Palliative Medicine and Supportive Care Flashcards is a comprehensive, evidence-based book of flashcards for clinicians caring for patients who require hospice and palliative care and supportive care. Written in a clinical scenario/vignette, question and answer format by experts with first-hand experience in the field, the flashcards are highly readable and serve as a source of fast answers to clinical questions in the field. A total of 300 flashcards are organized into chapters by symptom/disease and provide readers with up-to-date information that follow the core curriculum of American Board of Hospice and Palliative Medicine for ease of use and rapid review for exams. This book will equip care professionals with key concepts related to the assessment and management of palliative care, making it an ideal point-of-care quick reference material for physicians, nurse practitioners, fellows, residents, and students.

An on-the-go reference for hospice nurses and those interested in end-of-life care, this practical guide covers the essential elements in the compassionate and holistic care of terminally ill patients and their families. Nurses care for patients facing end-of-life issues in every practice specialty and, as the U.S. population continues to age, the need for proficiency in end-of-life skills will become increasingly important. Fast Facts for the Hospice Nurse: A Concise Guide to End-of-Life Care is an invaluable resource that provides emotional, administrative, and palliative support, whether in a hospice, long-term care facility, or acute care setting. This vital go-to text clearly and concisely lays out not only how to care for patients facing end-of-life issues, but also how to engage in self-care and cope with occupational stress. Beginning with an overview of hospice care, including its history and philosophy, this book offers a timeline of the growth of the hospice movement in the United States. Subsequent sections include up-to-date information on the clinical responsibilities of the hospice nurse in addressing the physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of terminally ill patients and their families in a culturally sensitive way. This book also outlines the administrative duties of the hospice nurse, including hospice documentation, a review of hospice regulations, and quality management. The closing section focuses on occupational stress in hospice nursing and how to engage in self-care. This text can serve as a useful clinical resource and also as a reference for nurses seeking hospice certification from the Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center. Key Features Organized within the context of the scope and standards of practice of the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association. Addresses key points about issues unique to hospice nursing and highlights evidence-based interventions Addresses important Medicare regulations and reimbursement Offers numerous clinical resources to assist with hospice nursing practice Serves as a concise study resource for hospice nursing certification

This new edition provides the essential clinical guidance both for those embarking upon a career in palliative medicine and for those already established in the field. A team of international experts here distil what every practitioner needs to know into a practical and reliable resource.

Essentials of Palliative Care is a to-the-point, clinically oriented resource for all members of the multidisciplinary palliative care team and trainees. It covers practical clinical topics, including assessment of the patient and pain and symptom management, and practical non-medical topics central to providing effective palliative care, including psychological management, guidance on how to help patients and their families through the many healthcare decision points they face, and sensitivity to the goals and culture of the patient. Review questions, with detailed answers, provide a convenient way for readers to test their knowledge. Features: · Concise, comprehensive, clinically focused · Multiple choice review questions, with detailed answers · Expert contributors from leading institutions · Coordination of care by palliative care team a major focus