Bereavement care is considered an integral component of quality end-of-life care endorsed by the palliative care movement. However, few hospitals and health care institutions offer universal bereavement care to all families of patients who die. The current coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has highlighted this gap and created a sense of urgency, from a public health perspective, for institutions to provide support to bereaved family members. In this article, drawing on the palliative care and bereavement literature, we offer suggestions about how to incorporate palliative care tools and psychological strategies into bereavement care for families during this pandemic.
This chapter discusses the importance of communication between professionals in palliative care. It begins by describing the evidence base that shows that patient and provider outcomes are significantly related to the effectiveness of interprofessional communication. Next it outlines the principles of good interprofessional communication including the importance of adopting an attitude of curiosity, recognizing that communication happens at several levels simultaneously, and acknowledging the importance of skilful conflict management. The following section on communication among members of an interdisciplinary team (IDT) reviews the barriers to good IDT communication, including team organization, provider hierarchy, and professional identity. The next section on communication between palliative consultants and other clinicians discusses consultation etiquette and its evidence base; highlights some of the particular challenges faced by palliative care consultants; and describes strategies for good communication in palliative care consultation. The chapter concludes with a description of future directions in the study and promulgation of interprofessional communication and the role that the field of palliative care can play.
This session will provide an orientation to the bigger picture trends in outpatient services, examples of innovation, and emerging health system enablers and constraints. The shared advice and learning from the IPAL-OP Advisory Board (10 palliative care leaders from leading programs) will be used to introduce participants to the purpose and recommended use of the new suite of tools. Participants will have time in small groups to discuss their own outpatient challenges or aspirations and to develop priorities for using the tools to support their own program development.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.