Kidney Failure
A textbook on palliative care would not be complete without a chapter on kidney disease. Palliative care is especially appropriate for patients with kidney disease who are undergoing dialysis because…
Heart Failure and Palliative Care
An 82-year-old woman who had not been to a physician in over 30 years was admitted to the hospital with fatigue and dyspnea. At home, she had been bedbound for…
Last Hours of Living
The death of someone close is never easy. No one can escape the experience of dying or death. Everyone at the dying person’s bedside will be watching the potential for…
Hematology/Oncology
Cancer survivors and their families face myriad challenges related to their disease and its treatment. This life-changing journey begins the moment they hear “cancer.” Palliative care of the oncology patient…
Understanding and Respecting Cultural Differences
Background and Significance Although death is universal, dying is very much a culturally specific experience. Culture refers to learned patterns of behaviors, beliefs, and values shared by individuals in a…
Legal and Ethical Issues in the United States
As the field of palliative care has grown and evolved, so also has an evolution occurred in the ethical and legal issues that are associated with care at the end…
Advance Care Planning
Overview Advance care planning is a process that aims to align medical decisions with patient values and preferences in the event that the patient cannot communicate. In the context of…
Responding to Requests for Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide
The palliative care movement developed in response to concerns that care at the end of life had been badly done in the midst of the acute care and technologic advances…
Withholding and Withdrawing Life-Sustaining Therapies
One of the advances of modern medical technology has been the creation of therapies to sustain life. These therapies, such as artificial nutrition and hydration, mechanical ventilation, dialysis, and cardiopulmonary…
Local Wound Care for Palliative and Malignant Wounds
Chronic cutaneous wounds often are complex, recalcitrant to healing, and may not follow a predictable trajectory of repair despite standard interventions. The exact mechanisms that contribute to poor wound healing…
