Palliative Care Commons^™

Exploring The Reassessment Of Palliative Home Care Clients: A Mixed Methods Study, Maya Canham

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Introduction: The timely reassessment of clients receiving palliative home care (HC) is critical for supporting clinicians with care planning and service delivery. However, there is little information on the frequency of reassessments and factors driving reassessment in palliative HC clients.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to: (i) determine the proportion of palliative HC clients reassessed with the interRAI Palliative Care (interRAI PC) instrument, (ii) calculate the average interRAI PC reassessment interval, (iii) identify the key factors driving interRAI PC reassessment at various intervals, and (iv) explore the factors that influence palliative HC clinicians to reassess their clients in …

Disrupting And Expanding The Discourse: Palliative Care Clinicians' Experiences With Patients' Non-Physical Suffering, Maxxine Rattner

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

While one of the primary aims of palliative care is to prevent and relieve suffering, both physical and non-physical, research to date has been very limited re: clinicians’ experiences with patients’ non-physical suffering (e.g., suffering that may be psychological, emotional, social, spiritual and/or existential in nature); both how clinicians work with/respond to this kind of suffering in their day-to-day work, and the effect of this aspect of their work on clinicians themselves. No research to date has considered the impact of palliative care’s dominant non-physical suffering discourse — which presents the relief of non-physical suffering as falling along a binary …

Adding Music Therapy To The Care Plan, Amy Clements-Cortés

Music Faculty Publications

I have chosen to write a short editorial on a topic not often included at the forefront of palliative care; music therapy. At the launch of an important journal that encourages articles addressing quality of life, while offering an educational forum for healthcare professionals to maintain relevance, it seems fitting to raise a topic that does not receive adequate attention in many palliative care settings.

Soothing Relaxation Journeys: Designing Evidence Based Music And Imagery Opportunities, Amy Clements-Cortés

Music Faculty Publications

This paper provides information on the creation of an original collection of music and imagery journeys based on the literature in oncology and palliative care. Background evidence is shared about music and relaxation, music relaxation in medical settings, and music and relaxation in oncology/hospice treatment. The development of the resource is illuminated with respect to principles that guided the design. The Journeys collection is a tool that can be used independently by persons experiencing a variety of issues including: anxiety, pain, stress, low self-esteem, and low mood, etcetera; as well as with groups when implemented by a healthcare professional. While …

Prevalence And Risk Factors Of Depressive Symptoms In A Canadian Palliative Home Care Population: A Cross Sectional Study, Kathryn A. Fisher, Hsien Seow, Kevin Brazil, Shannon Freeman, Trevor Frise Smith, Dawn M. Guthrie

Kinesiology and Physical Education Faculty Publications

Background: Depression in palliative care patients is important because of its intrinsic burden and association with elevated physical symptoms, reduced immunity and increased mortality risk. Identifying risk factors associated with depression can enable clinicians to more readily diagnose it, which is important since depression is treatable. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to determine the prevalence of depressive symptoms and risk factors associated with them in a large sample of palliative home care patients.

Methods: The data come from interRAI Palliative Care assessments completed between 2006 and 2012. The sample (n = 5144) consists of adults residing …

Music At The End Of Life: Bringing Comfort And Saying Goodbye Through Song And Story, Amy Clements-Cortés

Music Faculty Publications

Music has been an important part of the human existence across all continents and cultures since the beginning of recorded time. It is used, for example, in the celebration of happy events, for religious rituals, and to acknowledge the death of loved ones, often as part of spiritual and symbolic rituals. Although the formal and structured use of music as a component of care for individuals in end-of-life palliative care and hospice systems is relatively new in the world of contemporary medicine, its use is growing rapidly and is appreciated by both those providing the music and those receiving the …

Music Therapy To Sever The Silence Of A Childhood Holocaust Survivor, Amy Clements-Cortés

Music Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.