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This is a revised and expanded edition of a classic in palliative medicine, originally published in 1991, with three added chapters and a new preface summarizing our progress in the area of pain management. The obligation of physicians to relieve human suffering stretches back into antiquity. But what exactly, is suffering? One patient with cancer of the stomach, from which he knew he would shortly die, said he was not suffering. Another, someone who had been operated on for a minor problem—in little pain and not seemingly distressed—said that even coming into the hospital had been a source of pain and suffering. With such varied responses to the problem of suffering, inevitable questions arise. Is it the doctor's responsibility to treat the disease or the patient? And what is the relationship between suffering and the goals of medicine? According to the author of this book, these are crucial questions, but ones that have unfortunately remained only queries void of adequate solutions. It is time for the sick person, the author believes, to be not merely an important concern for physicians but the central focus of medicine. With this in mind, he argues for an understanding of what changes should be made in order to successfully treat the sick while alleviating suffering, and how to actually go about making these changes with the methods and training techniques firmly rooted in the doctor's relationship with the patient.

The essence of nursing care continually exposes nurses to suffering. Although they bear witness to the suffering of others, their own suffering is less frequently exposed. This book attempts to give voice to the suffering that nurses witness in patients, families, colleagues, and themselves. By making this suffering visible, the book aims both to honor and help solve the problem. The book offers nurses' colleagues in other professions — social workers, psychologists, chaplains, ethicists, and physicians — a window onto what it means to practice nursing.

This book gives voice and face to a vulnerable and disempowered population whose stories often remain untold: the urban dying poor. Drawing on complex issues surrounding poverty, class, and race, the book illuminates the unique sufferings that often remain unknown and hidden within a culture of broad invisibility. The book demonstrates how a complex array of factors, such as mistrust of physicians, regrettable indignities in care, and inadequate communication among providers, patients, and families, shape the experience of the dying poor in the inner city. This book challenges readers to look at reality in a different way. Demystifying stereotypes that surround poverty, the book illuminates how faith, remarkable optimism, and an unassailable spirit provide strength and courage to the dying poor. The book serves as a rallying call for compassionate individuals everywhere to understand and respond to the needs of the especially vulnerable, yet inspiring, people who comprise the world of the inner city dying poor.

This book provides an evidence-based overview of supportive care for the nephrology patient. An international group of contributors emphasize the continuum of palliative care from the time of diagnosis through to end-of-life care and the issues surrounding withdrawal of dialysis. The book addresses the psychological impact of the disease, the importance of involving the patient in making decisions about their care, ethical considerations, the role of the family and the multidisciplinary team. This second edition includes two new chapters on conservative management of advanced kidney disease (AKD) and dialysis in the very elderly. The chapters covering non pain symptoms, advance care planning, quality of life, psychological and psychiatric consideration, and end-of-life care have also be completely revised to include new evidence and current thinking.

This book is a practical and direct handbook for grieving. It presents 30 stories from real life that examine how we grieve and how we can help those who grieve—whether the griever is oneself, someone we care about, or a client or patient. The authors present vignettes from practice that show how death—lingering, unexpected, violent, or self-inflicted—and the loss of a relationship—to oneself or with a child, sibling, parent, mate, grandparent, or friend—give life to grief, together with the process by which each person fully encounters his or her grief. Each story is no more than two or three pages, and the authors follow each one with a short summary of its teachings and a selection of annotated recent references for those who wish to read more about a topic.

Drawing from his extensive clinical experience and many years of teaching, the author of this book has written a guide to palliative care for clinicians. The topics addressed range from an overview of death and dying to specific approaches to symptom management. As an introduction to both the art and science of palliative care, the book reflects the perspectives of one physician who has dedicated his career to this rapidly evolving field. It links real stories of illness with practical advice, thereby delineating clinical practice in a way that reflects the daily concerns of clinicians.

This book provides a unique view of patients, families, and their caregivers striving together to maintain comfort and hope in the face of incurable illness. The narratives weave together emotions, physical symptoms, spiritual concerns, and the stresses of family life, as well as the professional and personal challenges of providing hospice and palliative care. Based on a vast amount of participant observation and in-depth interviews, the book moves far beyond dry technical manuals for symptom control and tired clichés about death with dignity, to depict the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of the daily in patients' homes and the palliative care unit. It captures the breathtaking diversity of people's aspirations and ideals as they face death, and the views of the professionals who care for them. Anger and fear, tenderness and reconciliation, jealousy and love, social support and falling through the cracks, unexpected courage and unshakable faith—all of these are part of facing death in late twentieth-century North America, and this book brings them to life in a portrait of the processes of giving and receiving palliative care.

In this book, the author uses his wide range of clinical experience caring for severely ill patients and their families to illustrate the challenges and potential of end-of-life care. Section One utilizes the near-death experiences of two patients to explore values underlying medical humanism, and then presents the case of “Diane” to explore the fundamental clinical commitments of partnership and non-abandonment. Section Two explores, illustrates, and provides practical guidance for clinicians, patients, and families about critical communication issues including delivering bad news, discussing palliative care, and exploring the wish to die. In Section Three, difficult ethical and policy challenges inherent in hospice work, including the rule of double effect, terminal sedation, and physician-assisted suicide, are explored using a mix of real cases and an analysis of underlying clinical, ethical, and policy issues. In the final chapter, the author discusses the tragic death of his brother, which occurred as this book was being completed, and how his family made the most emotionally challenging decisions of their lives. The author exposes readers to an internally consistent and practical way of thinking by simultaneously embracing the potential of palliative care, and also acknowledging that it has limitations. His philosophy of offering forthright discussions with patient and family, mutual decision making, ensuring medical and palliative care expertise, and committing to see the dying process through to the patient's death, is vividly illustrated.

This book shows how much better fitted advanced concepts of primary care medicine are to America's health-care needs. It offers insights into how primary care physicians can be better trained to meet the needs of their patients, both well and sick, and to keep these patients as the focus of their practice. Modern medical training, the book notes, arose at a time when medical science was in ascendancy. Thus the ideals of science — objectivity, rationality — became the ideals of medicine, and disease — the target of most medical research — became the logical focus of medical practice. When clinicians treat a patient with pneumonia, they are apt to be thinking about pneumonia in general — which is how they learn about the disease — rather than this person's pneumonia. This objective, rational approach has its value, but when it dominates a physician's approach to medicine, it can create problems. Most important, this book argues that primary care medicine should become a central focus of America's health care system, not merely a cost-saving measure as envisioned by managed care organizations. Indeed, the book shows that the primary care physician can fulfill a unique role in the medical community, and a vital role in society in general. It shows that primary care medicine is not a retreat from scientific medicine, but the natural next step for medicine to take in the coming century.

For patients and their loved ones, no care decisions are more profound than those made near the end of life. Unfortunately, the experience of dying in the United States is often characterized by fragmented care, inadequate treatment of distressing symptoms, frequent transitions among care settings, and enormous care responsibilities for families. According to this report, the current health care system of rendering more intensive services than are necessary and desired by patients, and the lack of coordination among programs increases risks to patients and creates avoidable burdens on them and their families. Dying in America is a study of the current state of health care for persons of all ages who are nearing the end of life. Death is not a strictly medical event. Ideally, health care for those nearing the end of life harmonizes with social, psychological, and spiritual support. All people with advanced illnesses who may be approaching the end of life are entitled to access to high-quality, compassionate, evidence-based care, consistent with their wishes. Dying in America evaluates strategies to integrate care into a person- and family-centered, team-based framework, and makes recommendations to create a system that coordinates care and supports and respects the choices of patients and their families. The findings and recommendations of this report will address the needs of patients and their families and assist policy makers, clinicians and their educational and credentialing bodies, leaders of health care delivery and financing organizations, researchers, public and private funders, religious and community leaders, advocates of better care, journalists, and the public to provide the best care possible for people nearing the end of life.