Decision Making near the End of Life provides a comprehensive overview of the recent developments that have impacted decision-making processes within the field of end-of-life care. The most current developments in all aspects of major underlying issues such as public attitudes, the impact of media, bioethics, and legal precedent provide the background information for the text. The authors examine various aspects of end-of-life choices and decision-making, including communication (between and among family, medical personnel, the dying person), advance directives, and the emergence of hospice and palliative care institutions. The book also explores a variety of psychosocial considerations that arise in decision-making, including religion/spirituality, family caregiving, disenfranchised and diverse groups, and the psychological and psychiatric problems that can impact both the dying person and loved ones. Case studies and first-person stories about decision-making, written by professionals in the field, bring a uniquely personal touch to this valuable text.

In the highly specialized field of caring for children in the PICU, Fuhrman and Zimmerman's Pediatric Critical Care is the definitive reference for all members of the pediatric intensive care team. Drs. Jerry J. Zimmerman and Alexandre T. Rotta, along with an expert team of editors and contributors from around the world, have carefully updated the 6th Edition of this highly regarded text to bring you the most authoritative and useful information on today's pediatric critical care—everything from basic science to clinical applications. - Contains highly readable, concise chapters with hundreds of useful photos, diagrams, algorithms, and clinical pearls. - Uses a clear, logical, organ-system approach that allows you to focus on the development, function, and treatment of a wide range of disease entities. - Features more international authors and expanded coverage of global topics including pandemics, sepsis treatment in underserved communities, specific global health concerns by region. - Covers current trends in sepsis-related mortality and acute care after sepsis, as well as new device applications for pediatric patients. - Provides ultrasound videos and more than 500 board-style review questions and answers on Expert Consult. - Enhanced eBook version included with purchase. Your enhanced eBook allows you to access all of the text, figures, and references from the book on a variety of devices.

Originally published in 2001, the Textbook of Palliative Nursing has become the standard text for the field of hospice and palliative care nursing. In this new edition, the authors and editors have updated each chapter to ensure that the content is evidence-based and current references are included. They also have retained the important focus on case studies throughout the text and practical, clinically-relevant tables, figures, and other resources. Like the previous edition, this text has an introductory section of the general principles of palliative care followed by a comprehensive section on symptom assessment and management encompassing twenty-one different symptoms. Other key sections include psychosocial support and spiritual care, providing holistic perspective on care of patients facing advanced disease. The text also includes an innovative section on special populations addressing those most in need of palliative care. The textbook is a useful resource for all nurses with the excellent section on end-of-life care across settings. In this new edition, the pediatric palliative care section has been greatly expanded and includes seven separate chapters on pediatric care. It includes a section on "special issues" addressing topics such as ethical considerations, nursing research, and public policy perspectives and concludes with a section presenting models of excellence including six international models. This edition also offers a narrative on dying based on a spouse's perspective. The text includes an appendix with an extensive list of resources for nurses in the field.

Oncology Informatics: Using Health Information Technology to Improve Processes and Outcomes in Cancer Care encapsulates National Cancer Institute-collected evidence into a format that is optimally useful for hospital planners, physicians, researcher, and informaticians alike as they collectively strive to accelerate progress against cancer using informatics tools. This book is a formational guide for turning clinical systems into engines of discovery as well as a translational guide for moving evidence into practice. It meets recommendations from the National Academies of Science to "reorient the research portfolio" toward providing greater "cognitive support for physicians, patients, and their caregivers" to "improve patient outcomes." Data from systems studies have suggested that oncology and primary care systems are prone to errors of omission, which can lead to fatal consequences downstream. By infusing the best science across disciplines, this book creates new environments of "Smart and Connected Health." Oncology Informatics is also a policy guide in an era of extensive reform in healthcare settings, including new incentives for healthcare providers to demonstrate "meaningful use" of these technologies to improve system safety, engage patients, ensure continuity of care, enable population health, and protect privacy. Oncology Informatics acknowledges this extraordinary turn of events and offers practical guidance for meeting meaningful use requirements in the service of improved cancer care. Anyone who wishes to take full advantage of the health information revolution in oncology to accelerate successes against cancer will find the information in this book valuable. Presents a pragmatic perspective for practitioners and allied health care professionals on how to implement Health I.T. solutions in a way that will minimize disruption while optimizing practice goals Proposes evidence-based guidelines for designers on how to create system interfaces that are easy to use, efficacious, and timesaving Offers insight for researchers into the ways in which informatics tools in oncology can be utilized to shorten the distance between discovery and practice

Questions that face dying individuals, their families, and the professionals that help them at the end of their lives are explored in this volume. The contributors help the reader to come to terms with issues of mortality complicated by the diversity of cultures within society.

Decisions to withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment are contentious, and offer difficult moral dilemmas to both medical practitioners and the judiciary. This issue is exacerbated when the patient is unable to exercise autonomy and is entirely dependent on the will of others. This book focuses on the legal and ethical complexities surrounding end of life decisions for critically impaired and extremely premature infants. Neera Bhatia explores decisions to withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment from critically impaired infants and addresses the controversial question, which lives are too expensive to treat? Bringing to bear such key issues as clinical guidance, public awareness, and resource allocation, the book provides a rational approach to end of life decision making, where decisions to withdraw or withhold treatment may trump other competing interests. The book will be of great interest and use to scholars and students of bioethics, medical law, and medical practitioners.

Palliative Psychology provides clinical, evidence-based training in palliative and end of life care for clinical psychologists to accomplish specific therapeutic goals. Chapters provide a clear road map for approaching assessment and treatment by reviewing the use of psychotropic medications for patients with advanced and terminal illness, basic but important aspects of pain medication, in depth psychological and psychiatric assessment for patients with advanced illness and their caregivers, and assessment tools, highlighting the specific clinical contexts for their use. The volume also includes evidence-based psychotherapy models that have been shown effective in treating various manifestations of psychological distress in patients and caregivers. In addition to clinical topics, Palliative Psychology addresses crucial and often sensitive professional issues, including communication and collaboration with medical providers and issues of stress and burnout. Psychologists will learn how to best communicate the results of their assessments and treatment plan goals to other care providers in order to foster collaboration and better position themselves as advocates for their patients. Insight-oriented and practical suggestions will help clinicians manage the emotional intensity of this work and channel the therapeutic potential of their emotional reactions into their work with patients and caregivers.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Family Communication at the End of Life" that was published in Behavioral Sciences

Now in full-colour, this eagerly-anticipated second edition continues to be the most comprehensive resource available on non-invasive ventilation (NIV), both in the hospital and at home. Reflecting a global perspective with expert contributors from more than 15 countries, the book: • provides clinical examples of NIV in practice with insightful vignettes • covers home- and intensive care-based ventilation • details NIV use in acute and chronic respiratory failure, plus paediatric and other specialty applications. Disease-specific sections provide best practice in the science, diagnostics and management of conditions such as COPD, cardiac failure, neuromuscular disease and obesity, while features such as ‘Common Clinical Questions & Answers’, abundant tables and illustrations, chapter summaries and new clinical vignettes showcase the realities of NIV in practice. This is essential reading for pulmonologists, critical care physicians and intensive care medicine specialists.

"There are some paradoxes in the way doctors and patients make medical decisions today. Today's patients are more empowered than were patients in the past. They have the right to see their medical records. The law requires doctors to obtain their informed consent for treatment. Patients are told about the options for treatment and the risks and benefits of each option. Their values and preferences are elucidated in order to guide the treatments that are provided"--