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Hospital ethics committees sometimes find they are drawn into local cases that reflect national debates over health care costs and policies. These debates might surface when there are conflicts between family and hospital providers over continuing life-sustaining treatment, including nutritional support and ventilator care. But adding health care costs to the mix can make the situation more complicated.
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Some of the core principles of medical ethics are patient determination, doing good for patients, and doing justice. These also are some of the chief attributes of palliative care, experts say.
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Caregivers of the chronically critically ill report restrictions on personal and social aspects of their lives, they continue to be distressed by problematic patient behaviors, and they are most distressed by their loved ones' continued reports of pain and discomfort up to 6 months post-ICU discharge.
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Americans' differences in income, race/ethnicity, gender, and other social attributes make a difference in how likely they are to be healthy, sick, or die prematurely, according to a news release issued on a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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After two district courts struck down the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) regulations for calculating hospice caps, CMS issued an unprecedented rule that allowed all hospices with appropriately filed hospice cap repayment demand appeals to avoid going to court.
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How is your pain today? On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain? Are you comfortable today? Did the medication lessen your pain?
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The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) has published a report about end-of-life care, emphasizing the importance of more personal and private discussions about the topic.
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Current guidelines recommend hypothermia for comatose survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in whom return of circulation has been achieved.
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In a hospital with high ICU bed occupancy, delays in transferring critically ill patients from the emergency department or general wards to the ICU were associated with increased mortality in comparison with immediate transfer to an ICU bed, and this increased mortality was incrementally greater with increasing delay.
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Involving family members in ICU rounds improved satisfaction in some areas, such as physician communication and decision-making support, but failed to improve overall family satisfaction.
