Background: People with intellectual disabilities are often left out of research on important topics. This exploratory study investigated their views on barriers and facilitators to accessing care at end of life, both at home and in a hospice setting. Method: This qualitative study used reflexive thematic analysis. Two focus groups were held via…

Background: The use of videos for patient and public health education has been widely adopted and well documented in the literature. Aims: To conduct a systematic review of empirical studies that used video-based interventions for cancer prevention and control to document study designs, settings, approaches, targeted cancer sites and behaviors,…

Palliative care is specialized medical care offered to persons with serious health conditions, with the goal to relieve or prevent pain and suffering, to manage burdensome symptoms, and to optimize as much as possible the quality of life of patients and their families (Institute of Medicine, 2015). Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are not…

The role of schools in both educating children about loss and change and supporting bereavement experiences is emphasised, yet, school staff report low confidence in being able to support children when someone dies. This article reports on an evaluation of bereavement training that was offered to eight schools in Scotland and aimed to assist…

The reach of art therapy in assisting a hospice patient in confronting existential issues at the end of life is illustrated in this article with a case that took place over the course of 22 semiweekly sessions. Painting with an art therapist allowed the patient to shift from a state of anxiety and existential dread to a more accepting, fluid…

Background: Research on staffed housing for people with intellectual disability has identified the challenges in achieving positive quality of life outcomes. However, a less well considered dimension of such services is that they are places of living and dying. This paper looks at the experiences of staff in dealing with issues of death and dying.…

Author Carol Thomas was formerly a school counselor and is now a therapist in private practice specializing in work with adolescents. She says she has always been interested in learning how to best provide support to grieving teens. In this article, Dr. Thomas interviews Ms. Wendy Littner Thomson, the Bereavement Coordinator and Counselor at St.…

Although the role of spiritual, psychological, and social factors is receiving increasing attention in the end of life (EOL) context, we know far less than we need to about how these factors shape attitudes toward life and death in the face of looming loss. The present study begins to remedy these limitations by examining the relative impact of…

This qualitative study of nine women examined the changes in their everyday lives as they cared for their terminally-ill husbands and after their husbands died. It also studied how the women coped with these changes, and how their coping contributed to their identity change from wife to widow. Symbolic interaction was utilized to study the changes…

Student nurses are involved in caring for patients who are actively dying or who have been told they have a terminal illness and are faced with the process of dying. Students encounter these patients in hospitals, nursing homes, at home or in hospice care settings. According to Robinson (2004), "nurses are the healthcare providers that are most…

Examined competencies that hospice practitioners and experts in the field would agree upon as necessary attributes to being an effective hospice team member. Results indicated strong positive agreement between the rankings of the practitioners on emotional and interpersonal characteristics needed by hospice personnel to effectively function with…

In hospice, those who work with families have an opportunity to help the terminally ill patient and the patient's family experience death as a time for growth. There are four basic concepts of the hospice philosophy: (1) the patient and the family are the units of care; (2) physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of the patient and the family…

Hospice patient/family volunteers responded to personality questionnaires prior to training and to measures of death understanding and coping before and after training. Results showed that the volunteers were relatively low in anxiety, internally controlled, and empathetic before training. Following training, volunteers reported better…

The author's reflections on Becky's legacy (see Werth, this issue) revolve around the idea that she can serve as a role model and that Becky's and Jim's experiences provide guidance to others who will inevitably go through the dying process. She also highlights several themes she saw in Werth's article: a cultural revolution around dying, the…

This study examined the work behaviors of individuals with graduate degrees who provide clinical services to terminally ill individuals, family members, and the bereaved. An instrument was developed to assess the frequency and importance of work behaviors of individuals working with dying individuals and their families. Participants were randomly…