This user-friendly guide offers you practical, direct answers for the difficult and little-taught questions that arise when providing care for the dying.
Features:
* Perspectives of patients, families, and other health care professionals, as well as physicians
* Solution-oriented coverage on preparing patients, managing symptoms, and handling legal/ethical issues near the end of life
* Guidance on timing: when is end-of-life care needed?
* Breaking bad news: how to inform the patient
* Useful, current, guidelines on the treatment of pain, dyspnea, skin and mucus membrane problems, gastrointestinal conditions, and other common symptoms near the end of life
* In-depth discussion of end-of-life controversies, including advance directives and resuscitation, nutritional support and parenteral hydration, and physician-assisted suicide
* How to assess quality of life near its end
* Practical help with end-of-life care for special groups, such as HIV and pediatric patients
* Guidance on bereavement, depression, and other psychosocial and spiritual issues at the end of life
* Suggestions on benefiting from interdisciplinary teamwork
* What every clinician needs to know about the last days of the actively dying
