Medical Ethics Advisor – July 1, 2009
July 1, 2009
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Caring for the caregiver to avoid moral distress, burnout
Due to the altruistic nature of most health care providers, members of the giving professions often put their own needs last, often to the detriment of themselves, their colleagues and their personal lives and sometimes their patients. -
Paper highlights initiatives and interventions
About 12 years ago, Cynda Hylton Rushton, PhD, RN, FAAN, and others at Johns Hopkins set about to examine the issue of nurse self-care and the quality of care being delivered in pediatric palliative care. -
Self-care of physicians: Strategies for care
Physicians may be operating in burnout mode or suffering from other maladies related to distress and stress long before they are even aware of it, according to Michael K. Kearney, MD, one of the authors of a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) earlier this year titled "Self-care of Physicians Caring for Patient at the End of Life: "Being Connected A Key to My Survival." -
Use of hospitalists creates concerns over continuity
Hospitalists, very simply, are physicians who provide hospital-based care exclusively, and it is increasingly the model used by institutions in order to have physicians on staff and on call at their institutions on a 24/7 basis. -
Project BOOST seeks to improve care transitions
With the recognition by hospitalists that improvements needed to be made in transitions in care, primarily focusing on the discharge process to prevent readmissions, the Society of Hospital Medicine has set out to make those improvements. -
Harvard's Committee seeks to give voice to all
Seeking to give a voice to the patients served by its various institutions, Harvard has established the Harvard Community Ethics Committee with one distinct mission: To contribute to ethical decision-making. Now, those decisions are being made with input from members of the community.