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Beyond the Numbers: Describing care at the end of life.
In the February issue of PLoS Medicine, Olav Lindqvist and colleagues describe the range of nonpharmacological caregiving activities provided by palliative care staff for cancer patients in the last days of life. Their findings demonstrate that nonpharmacological care at the end of life is multifaceted, with physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and existential care interwoven in caregiving activities. In a linked editorial, the PLoS Medicine Editors reflect on Lindqvist and colleagues' findings, and on their approach to the emotive and often taboo subject of caregiving for the dying. The Editors comment: “[The results of this study] reveal the complex and sometimes subtle caregiving approaches that palliative care staff take to improve the experience of dying for both patient and family…Research such as this not only provides hope that it is possible to have a good quality of death but also suggests that through research the experience of dying can be improved.”
Image Credit: Sam Caplat (samcaplat at flickr.com)
Citation: (2012) PLoS Medicine Issue Image | Vol. 9(2) February 2012. PLoS Med 9(2): ev09.i02. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pmed.v09.i02
Published: February 28, 2012
Copyright: © 2012 Caplat. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
In the February issue of PLoS Medicine, Olav Lindqvist and colleagues describe the range of nonpharmacological caregiving activities provided by palliative care staff for cancer patients in the last days of life. Their findings demonstrate that nonpharmacological care at the end of life is multifaceted, with physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and existential care interwoven in caregiving activities. In a linked editorial, the PLoS Medicine Editors reflect on Lindqvist and colleagues' findings, and on their approach to the emotive and often taboo subject of caregiving for the dying. The Editors comment: “[The results of this study] reveal the complex and sometimes subtle caregiving approaches that palliative care staff take to improve the experience of dying for both patient and family…Research such as this not only provides hope that it is possible to have a good quality of death but also suggests that through research the experience of dying can be improved.”
Image Credit: Sam Caplat (samcaplat at flickr.com)