This was the first known study that focused specifically on the exploration of a collective spirituality. The culture of palliative care seems to foster spiritual reflection among health care professionals both as individuals and as a whole. While spirituality was difficult to describe, it was a shared experience often tangibly present in the provision of care on all levels.
Patients with advanced cancer experience various problems with eating, and their meals should be tailored to meet their specific needs. Two methods of food service were compared in a shared acute oncology/palliative care unit; an electrical food cart allowing patients to select their food types and portions at the bedside, and a traditional food tray delivery service that relied on meals being prepared in a centralized kitchen and then delivered by tray. Over a 10-day period, lunch meals were delivered by food cart and supper meals via food trays. Twenty-seven out of 32 patients participated in the trial. Patients significantly preferred the food cart to the trays with respect to the timing and appeal of the meal, appropriateness of food types and food portions and the variety of the food choices. A food cart as used in this trial provides a more flexible and appropriate method of food delivery to in-patients in the oncology and palliative unit. Further studies should examine whether this translates to improved caloric intake and quality of life parameters.
Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds are among the most valuable hospital resources for which demands periodically exceed supplies. Hence monitoring and management of utilization of these resources is essential for providing an efficient and equitable service. The purpose of this article is to describe the design, development and utilization of a dashboard for the measurement of occupancy and management of capacity of a provincial network of ICUs. The dashboard utilizes the exiting hospital data sources and infrastructure to provide a timely snapshot of bed utilization as well as a historical view of unit occupancy and enables simulation scenarios for capacity planning in a dispersed geographical location. This information is used by administration for managing the scarce ICU resources and helping with standardization of admit and discharge processes to and from intensive care units in order to enhance efficiency. In our case, the existing hospital information systems proved to contain reliable data and the existing information technology infrastructure owned proper resources to be accessed to develop such valuable tool. Such dashboard presents necessary information to facilitate understanding of capacity and bed utilization and can help create a sense of community and standardization of critical care services which would eventually contribute to a more equitable and efficient health system.
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.