Volunteers have a long been involved in supporting the delivery of palliative care. Indeed in some countries, the range and quality of hospice and palliative care services depends on the involvement of volunteers. Hospice and palliative care services and volunteering are changing. As society develops, so too does volunteering. Volunteers have growing expectations of organizations, and increasingly seek roles that meet their needs and aspirations, rather than fitting in with organizational approaches. As hospice and palliative care services experience increasing and changing demands for their services due to aging populations with complex healthcare needs, we need to recognize that volunteers have a vital role to play in supporting the delivery of services of the future. The Changing Face of Volunteering in Hospice and Palliative Care explores the complex phenomenon that is volunteering in hospice and palliative care in different countries. It considers how and why volunteering is changing, through the contributions of authors from Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Australia, Africa, and India. It reflects on the influence of culture and organisational contexts, in addition to management approaches, legislative, and political influences, highlighting factors that contribute to the success of volunteering. Contributing to knowledge and understanding in the field of volunteering in hospice and palliative care internationally, this book highlights the factors that contribute to the success of volunteering models, allowing readers to see possibilities for change and find new ideas for innovative practice in their own setting.

Now fully revised and in its fourth edition, the Oxford Handbook of Oncology has been the essential go-to guide for students and practitioners in oncology for over a decade. The scientific basis and diagnosis of cancers is covered, as well as drugs, biomarkers, and the presentation and psychosocial aspects of oncology. Concise, practical, and comprehensive, there is no better companion for both common conditions and challenging emergencies. The field of oncology has surged forward since the last edition was published and the Oxford Handbook of Oncology has been fully revised and updated to reflect these recent advances so you can be sure that the vital information you need is in your hands. This handbook incorporates changes such as the understanding of the science of cancer, novel therapies in breast, lung, renal, and melanoma, molecular sub-classification of common solid cancers, personalized therapy approaches, new agents in hard to treat cancers, the benefits of new technologies in radiotherapy, and the emerging data on the importance of the immune response. Written by experts in the field to ensure that it is grounded in real life clinical practice, this handbook provides a concise guide to all aspects of oncology for all students, nurses, and junior faculty responsible for the care of cancer patients, while also providing further reading and highlighting areas of controversy for those who need a more detailed understanding.

This open access book has been written by ten Belgian health care professionals, nurses, university professors and doctors specializing in palliative care and ethicists who, together, raise questions concerning the practice of euthanasia. They share their experiences and reflections born out of their confrontation with requests for euthanasia and end-of-life support in a country where euthanasia has been decriminalized since 2002 and is now becoming a trivial topic.Far from evoking any militancy, these stories of life and death present the other side of a reality needs to be evaluated more rigorously.Featuring multidisciplinary perspectives, this though-provoking and original book is intended not only for caregivers but also for anyone who questions the meaning of death and suffering, as well as the impact of a law passed in 2002. Presenting real-world cases and experiences, it highlights the complexity of situations and the consequences of the euthanasia law.This book appeals to palliative care providers, hematologists, oncologists, psychiatrists, nurses and health professionals as well as researchers, academics, policy-makers, and social scientists working in health care. It is also a unique resource for those in countries where the decriminalization of euthanasia is being considered. Sometimes shocking, it focuses on facts and lived experiences to challenge readers and offer insights into euthanasia in Belgium.

What do you need to know in order to provide the best possible care for sick children of different faiths? What, in the context of the young person's faith, might it be helpful to know to support the child and the family, improve care, communicate sensitively and avoid causing offence? Drawing on extensive, evidence-based research and practice, this practical resource addresses the multi-faith needs of sick and dying children and young people in hospitals and the wider community. Covering Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism, it provides the key information needed to help multi-disciplinary healthcare staff offer the best, culturally-appropriate care to sick children and their families. The book discusses daily, palliative, end of life and bereavement care in a range of settings, including hospitals, hospices, schools and home. The information provided covers those aspects of the religions discussed that are essential for healthcare staff to understand, including modesty and hygiene, taboos, food and prohibited products, age-related issues, sacred objects, visitors, and the expectations of the family. It includes important information on the issues of disability and mental health in each faith as well as addressing the significance within different faith traditions of the transitions from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. A comprehensive resource that uniquely focuses on the care needs of sick children from different faiths, this book will be of immeasurable value to multi-disciplinary healthcare professionals including doctors, nurses, bereavement support and palliative care workers, carers, counsellors, chaplains and arts therapists.

Palliative care supports patients suffering from life-limiting illnesses by providing relief from physical, emotional and spiritual suffering, improving the quality of life for them and their families. It is an important component of good patient care, an integral part of the continuum of support for patients suffering with advanced cancer and end stage organ diseases. Providing good palliative care requires both sound clinical knowledge and compassion.With new chapters on end stage organ diseases, spiritual care and medical ethics, all healthcare professionals will find wisdom and practical advice in this book by the patient's bedside. The editors and contributors of the 2nd Edition of The Bedside Palliative Medicine Handbook have taken great care to provide readers with an evidence-based, updated guide to the practice of palliative medicine.

Hospice care is available to patients and families dealing with terminal illness. People often do not avail themselves of hospice care because they don't understand what it entails. Many wait until their last few days to request this extraordinary comfort care instead of using the full six months available to them through Medicare and other insurance options. Demystifying Hospice describes through stories good news about end-of-life issues. Written from the perspective of a licensed social worker with experience in public and private hospitals, hospice, and the American Cancer Society, these first-hand accounts of patients, family members, hospice workers and others will lift spirits, touch hearts, and illustrate the advantages of hospice care. These are real-life examples of personalized comfort care, offered by an interdisciplinary team, where ever the patient lives. Each story addresses some aspect of helping families through the caregiving and grieving process, which are part-and-parcel of a serious illness, and offers comfort and understanding to readers who may be going through similar experiences. This book describes hope, healing, and support through difficult times.

Many hospice social workers must address spiritual issues with their clients, but do not feel competent to do so effectively. This targeted volume draws upon multidisciplinary theory and research to advance a relational model of spiritually sensitive hospice care. The book will help readers elevate their spiritual competence and foster a relationship with their clients that will enrich the experience for all involved. Spirituality and Hospice Social Work helps practitioners understand various forms of spiritual assessment for use with their clients. The book teaches practitioners to recognize a client's spiritual needs and resources, as well as signs of spiritual suffering. It also discusses religious and spiritual practices that clients may use to enhance their spiritual coping. Spirituality and Hospice Social Work stresses the need for interdisciplinary collaboration with other members of the hospice team, along with the value of maintaining professional ethical standards when addressing spiritual issues. Throughout, the importance of spiritual sensitivity and its effect upon client well-being is emphasized.

Kidney Disease: From advanced disease to bereavement provides guidance to renal and palliative care professionals dealing with patients with advanced kidney disease, who are approaching end of life. The book describes the tools used to achieve a good death including advance care planning, symptom control law and ethics, recognizing dying, withdrawal of treatment, and a holistic approach to patient care. By using case histories, the book highlights how to facilitate good communication between patients, families and their renal and palliative teams. There are also chapters on support for carers and bereavement. Revised and updated, this new edition is written in a bullet point style to provide an indispensable guide to the day-to-day management of patient care. This pocketbook will be an essential guide for nephrologists, renal nurses, nephrologist trainees, and doctors and nurses working in palliative care.

Sarah Thebarge, a Yale-trained physician assistant, nearly died of breast cancer at age twenty-seven, but that did not end her deeply felt spiritual calling to medical missions in Africa. Risking her own health, she moved to Togo, West Africa-ranked by the United Nations as the least happy country in the world-to care for sick and suffering patients. Serving without pay in a mission hospital, she pondered the intersection of faith and medicine in her quest to help make the world "well." In the hospital wards, she witnessed death over and over again. In the outpatient clinic, she daily diagnosed patients with deadly diseases, many of which had simple but unavailable cures. She lived in austere conditions and nearly succumbed herself in a harrowing bout with malaria. She describes her experiences in gripping detail and reflects courageously about difficult and deep human connections-across race, culture, material circumstances, and medical access. Her experience exemplifies the triumph of surviving in order to share the stories that often go untold. In the end, WELL is an invitation to ask what happens when, instead of asking why God allows suffering to happen in the world, we ask, "Why do we?"

From the internationally acclaimed author of the groundbreaking and award-winning book Dementia Beyond Drugs comes another eye-opening exploration of how to improve the lives of people with dementia and those who care for them. In this revised edition-including updated facts, studies, and terminology-Dr. G. Allen Power demonstrates how to achieve sustainable success in dementia care by changing the caregiving lens to focus on well-being and the ways in which it can be enhanced in people living with dementia. Revealing how drug-based interventions as well as completely holistic approaches consistently fall short of addressing and meeting the needs of people with dementia, this book offers a proactive approach-one that challenges widely accepted dementia care practices and provides a compelling new framework for developing more effective dementia services. Through in-depth examinations of seven domains of well-being, readers will discover how current care practices erode them, and the transformative approaches that can restore them, plus: how to apply a well-being approach to the everyday care of people living with dementia a highly adaptable framework that can be adopted in any living environment valuable insight on overcoming physical and operational barriers to well-being a wealth of person-centered, strengths-based approaches to care Filled with true stories that demonstrate the power of a well-being approach to greatly improve the lives of people with dementia as well as those who care for them, this book presents methods that promise a new and hopeful vision for achieving the best possible outcomes for every person living with cognitive changes. Readers will be challenged, motivated, and profoundly inspired.

Palliative Care is the first book to provide a comprehensive understanding of the new field that is transforming the way Americans deal with serious illness.

Diane E. Meier, M.D., one of the field's leaders and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius award" in 2009, opens the volume with a sweeping overview of the field. In her essay, Dr. Meier examines the roots of palliative care, explores the key legal and ethical issues, discusses the development of palliative care, and presents ideas on policies that can improve access to palliative care.

Dr. Meier's essay is followed by reprints of twenty-five of the most important articles in the field. They range from classic pieces by some of the field's pioneers, such as Eric Cassel, Balfour Mount, and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, to influential newer articles on topics such as caregiving and cost savings of palliative care. The reprints cover a wide range of topics including:

Why the care of the seriously ill is so important

Efforts to cope with advanced illness

Legal and ethical issues

Pain management

Cross-cultural issues

Philosophical perspective

The demand for palliative care has been nothing short of stunning--largely because of palliative care's positive impact on both the quality and the cost of care provided to seriously ill individuals. By providing a wide-ranging perspective on this growing field, this book will serve as a guide for developing meaningful approaches that will lead to better health care for all Americans.

Given our aging population, there will sadly be an increasing number of terminally-ill patients over the next ten to twenty years. A Patient-Centered Approach to Medicine for the Terminally-Ill explains that a more humane patient-centered approach is necessary to ensure that terminally-ill patients are cared for effectively at the end of life. It is a well-known fact that terminally-ill patients are very difficult to care for by their physicians and other medical specialists, and paternalism is no longer a viable way of caring for the terminally-ill. In this book, Switankowsky argues that there are five conditions for physicians to bring about patient-centered medicine. These are: effective physician-patient disclosure of treatments, successful decision-making, effective communication, development of effective physician-patient relationships, and advance directives. By following these five necessary conditions, physicians could ensure that all terminally-ill patients die with some degree of dignity and are given essential, humane care until the end of their days.

This is a unique resource to improve this difficult and highly sensitive area of communication, ideal for both individual use and by groups or in teaching. It offers a visual, interactive training experience, linking with supportive care frameworks. It is accompanied bya DVD which contains filmed scenes illustrating a range of challenging dialogues between health workers and a patient and his family through the journey of his terminal illness. Accompanying booklet highlights communication issues with suggested exercises, reflection points and advice. It is available as individual-use-only product for self-reflective learning, or institutional-use product for tutored learning, both priced to give excellent value.

...members of the caring professions need all the counselling skills that we can muster. Readers of this book will end up feeling less helpless in the face of death but we should not expect to find communication easy. "What can we say?" Once we think we know what to say we are wrong. Rather this book will help us to learn when to speak of dying and when not to, what not to say and when to keep silent and wait patiently for what gliding instructors call an 'up-draught'. We must start from wherever the other person may be and we must take the time and trouble to discover the language with which this person speaks about death and dying, the assumptions they make and their needs and wishes to speak or not to speak. - From the Foreword by Dr Colin Murray Parkes, Life President of Cruse Bereavement Care Good counselling skills are often not taught to the professionals who need them most. Compassionate and tactful communication skills can make the difference between an awkward encounter with a dying patient, and an engaging, empathic bond between two people. Louis Heyse-Moore draws on his wealth of experience as a trained counsellor and palliative medicine specialist. Covering difficult subjects such as breaking the news of terminal illness to a patient, euthanasia and the effect of working with patients on carers, Speaking of Dying is a practical guide to using counselling skills for all clinical disciplines working in palliative care, whether in a hospice, hospital or at home. Complete with a clear explanation of both counselling and medical terminology, this hands-on guide will be an invaluable companion to anyone working in palliative care.

This text introduces the reader to the key issues surrounding care of the dying patient, as well as highlighting the importance of context in the social management of dying. Written in a pragmatic style, it provides a foundation from which to consider the theoretical and practical concerns that are central to terminal care in institutional as well as community-based settings. Illustrated with case studies that demonstrate how the themes of the book can be applied in practice, this text encourages readers to reflect on research findings so that they are stimulated to formulate their own ideas about caring for dying patients.

Just as everyone must die, almost everyone will deal with death among close friends or loved ones. This collection explores the often difficult issues of human relationships with the dying, as well as the many stresses and burdens faced by the survivors.

The Oxford Textbook of Palliative Social Work is a comprehensive, evidence-informed text that provides clinicians, researchers, policy-makers, and academics with a broad range of content to inform and enhance palliative social work practice. This definitive resource brings together an array of more than 150 international authors and is edited by three leading palliative social work pioneers to address the needs of professionals providing interprofessional, culturally sensitive, biopsychosocial-spiritual care for patients and families living with serious illness. Social workers from diverse settings will benefit from the historical perspective and international scope as well as the wealth of patient and family narratives. In keeping with the dynamic growth of the field over the last decade, this second edition offers a substantially deeper dive both conceptually and contextually into the more nuanced delivery of palliative social work. This edition includes additional chapters that reflect the increased integration of palliative social work across populations, diagnoses, and settings. Each chapter has been extensively updated integrating current evidence, with a section specifically devoted to interventions for the purpose of affirming the scope of social work palliative practice. A new preface highlights aspects of social-political inequity and injustice that informed the development, process, and ultimate content of this Text. International palliative social work practice is reflected by regional voices and highlighted by an exploration of the unique response to the COVID-19 pandemic as it evolved in their respective countries. Professional issues explore topics of mentoring, supervision, advocacy, leadership, certification, legacy, and resilience.

This beautifully illustrated and sensitive storybook is designed to be used therapeutically by professionals and caregivers supporting children with an untreatable illness. With gentle and colourful illustrations that can help children with fears and feelings, it tells the story of the final journey made by a Boy with a Bear, as the Boy says his goodbyes and comes to terms with his life-ending illness. In this bundle, it is accompanied by the Storybook Manual, a resource that has been designed to support practitioners and caregivers with practical and creative ideas on how to use illustrated storybooks therapeutically with children. Key features include: An inviting and sensitively written fairy tale, with a story and illustrations that have been specifically designed to support children going through difficult life-events A supporting manual that offers a range of prompts, ideas and activities to encourage children's imagination and creativity, develop confidence and emotional literacy as well as deepen engagement and understanding of storybooks. Downloadable worksheets to support the story and explore specific themes further This is an invaluable resource for all professionals looking to use stories and images therapeutically with children suffering from a life-ending illness. The resources can also be adapted for wider use with siblings and other family members.

This book helps nursing and healthcare students to prepare for the challenges of working with the increasing number of patients requiring palliative care, so that they can work in partnership with patients and their carers, providing care that is compassionate, practical and backed up by the latest evidence. Delivering palliative care can be emotionally challenging and the book focuses on supporting healthcare staff, allowing them to provide the care that is needed. Key features include: * case studies in every chapter, helping students to practically work through difficult scenarios * reflective activities that assist readers in thinking critically about their care and how to improve it * a holistic approach to palliative care that includes family, carers and interprofessional work * up to date theory and policy. Palliative Care in Nursing and Healthcare is suitable for undergraduate nursing students and allied health students and practitioners. Michelle Brown is Senior Lecturer at the University of Derby.

`There is much to learn about easing suffering from John's reflective narrative. The journal is both evocative and illuminating. The attention given to individuals patients experiences and to the manner in which practitioners can help to relieve suffering is the main strength of the book' -Journal of Advanced Nursing `Christopher Johns has written an exquisite book detailing the experience of being a palliative care nurse. He has taken a unique approach in chronicling his practice through a journal, which serves a model for the reader on reflective practice. Johns' book is insightful on several levels. He offers a poignant book about the practice of palliative care, which will certainly evoke deep feelings and memories for many who have cared for dying patients. The narrative serves a model for reflective practice for students and practitioners alike who wish to explore this method of research and self-inquiry. John also, as the postscript writer describe, addresses some of the lessons that can be learned in palliative care work, the importance of living in the moment, and acknowledgement of the constantly changing nature of life.' - Mary L. Wilby, MSN, CRNP, La Salle University School of Nursing `Chris Johns has produced a book that is, I believe, unique in the field of nursing practice. In his personal and philosophical reflections on palliative care he pin-points...the very essence of nursing practice... This text should be at the heart not only of nursing but also the way in which we should live our lives.' - Denise Rankin-Box, Editor in Chief, Complementary Therapies in Nursing and Midwifery Written by an experienced palliative care nurse, trainer, and complementary therapist, Being Mindful, Easing Suffering is an essential resource for professionals working with the seriously ill and the dying. Chris Johns describes how he has combined traditional medical, and more reflective models in his palliative practice, enabling him to work mindfully to alleviate physical and non-physical pain and suffering throughout the health-illness cycle. With reference to ideas from Buddhist philosophy around compassion and reflective knowing, this important book shows how the core task of those working in palliative care is to nurture the spiritual growth and development of their patients and, in turn, themselves.

Education of healthcare professionals is the cornerstone of specialist palliative services. This book is a practical toolbox of teaching techniques. Accessible, practical and easy to use it will encourage busy clinicians to teach by increasing their confidence in their training abilities. It provides a resource of various tools and describes how to approach teaching in a team, planning, methods and evaluation. Each chapter presents a menu of tried and tested techniques and closes with examples of lesson plans. The multidisciplinary experiences of the contributors are reflected in the book and healthcare professionals working in palliative care, hospitals, hospices or the community will find it to be essential reading.

Exploring the emotional problems patients, relatives, close friends and professionals experience and the support they need when someone is dying, this book focuses on the skills required to support the patient and to provide pre- and post-bereavement counselling for relatives. It is based on theory and research, illustrated with examples from the author's practical and international experience. It emphasises practical communication skills that can be applied in everyday working practice. It encourages readers to reflect on their own practice, strengths and weaknesses, and their contribution to the multi-professional team. Questions and exercises at the end of each chapter encourage reflection, discussion and learning. This work should be of benefit to health professionals, especially those working in palliative and terminal care, hospices and nursing homes. It is of particular use to members of nursing teams. It should also be of interest to patients and relatives who are close to a dying person.