Palliative care in acute care surgery: research challenges and opportunities
Palliative care includes effective communication, relief of suffering and symptom management with an underlying goal of improving the quality of life for patients with serious illness and their families. Best practice palliative care is delivered in parallel with life-sustaining or life-prolonging c...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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BMJ Publishing Group
2025-03-01
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| Series: | Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open |
| Online Access: | https://tsaco.bmj.com/content/10/1/e001615.full |
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| author | Gail T Tominaga Lisa M Kodadek Vanessa Ho Zara Cooper Thaddeus J Puzio Rachel S Morris Amelia W Maiga Masami Tabata-Kelly |
| author_facet | Gail T Tominaga Lisa M Kodadek Vanessa Ho Zara Cooper Thaddeus J Puzio Rachel S Morris Amelia W Maiga Masami Tabata-Kelly |
| author_sort | Gail T Tominaga |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Palliative care includes effective communication, relief of suffering and symptom management with an underlying goal of improving the quality of life for patients with serious illness and their families. Best practice palliative care is delivered in parallel with life-sustaining or life-prolonging care. Palliative care affirms life and regards death as a normal process, intends neither to hasten death nor to postpone death and includes but is not limited to end-of-life care. Palliative care encompasses both primary palliative care (which can and should be incorporated into the practice of acute care surgery) and specialty palliative care (consultation with a fellowship-trained palliative care provider). Acute care surgeons routinely care for individuals who may benefit from palliative care. Patients exposed to traumatic injury, emergency surgical conditions, major burns and/or critical surgical illness are more likely to be experiencing a serious illness than other hospitalized patients. Palliative care research is urgently needed in acute care surgery. At present, minimal high-quality research is available to guide selection of palliative care interventions. This narrative review summarizes the current state of research challenges and opportunities to address palliative care in acute care surgery. Palliative care research in acute care surgery can rely on either primary data collection or secondary and administrative data. Each approach has its advantages and limitations, which we will review in this article. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-5b2971dd67384ea38818d43201942365 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2397-5776 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-03-01 |
| publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open |
| spelling | doaj-art-5b2971dd67384ea38818d432019423652025-08-20T01:50:35ZengBMJ Publishing GroupTrauma Surgery & Acute Care Open2397-57762025-03-0110110.1136/tsaco-2024-001615Palliative care in acute care surgery: research challenges and opportunitiesGail T Tominaga0Lisa M Kodadek1Vanessa Ho2Zara Cooper3Thaddeus J Puzio4Rachel S Morris5Amelia W Maiga6Masami Tabata-Kelly7Trauma Service, Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, La Jolla, California, USASurgery, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USADivision of Trauma, Critical Care, Emergency General Surgery, and Burns, Department of Surgery, MetroHealth, Cleveland, Ohio, USASurgery, Brigham and Women`s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USADivision of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas, USADepartment of Surgery, Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USADivision of Acute Care Surgery, Department of Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USACenter for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USAPalliative care includes effective communication, relief of suffering and symptom management with an underlying goal of improving the quality of life for patients with serious illness and their families. Best practice palliative care is delivered in parallel with life-sustaining or life-prolonging care. Palliative care affirms life and regards death as a normal process, intends neither to hasten death nor to postpone death and includes but is not limited to end-of-life care. Palliative care encompasses both primary palliative care (which can and should be incorporated into the practice of acute care surgery) and specialty palliative care (consultation with a fellowship-trained palliative care provider). Acute care surgeons routinely care for individuals who may benefit from palliative care. Patients exposed to traumatic injury, emergency surgical conditions, major burns and/or critical surgical illness are more likely to be experiencing a serious illness than other hospitalized patients. Palliative care research is urgently needed in acute care surgery. At present, minimal high-quality research is available to guide selection of palliative care interventions. This narrative review summarizes the current state of research challenges and opportunities to address palliative care in acute care surgery. Palliative care research in acute care surgery can rely on either primary data collection or secondary and administrative data. Each approach has its advantages and limitations, which we will review in this article.https://tsaco.bmj.com/content/10/1/e001615.full |
| spellingShingle | Gail T Tominaga Lisa M Kodadek Vanessa Ho Zara Cooper Thaddeus J Puzio Rachel S Morris Amelia W Maiga Masami Tabata-Kelly Palliative care in acute care surgery: research challenges and opportunities Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open |
| title | Palliative care in acute care surgery: research challenges and opportunities |
| title_full | Palliative care in acute care surgery: research challenges and opportunities |
| title_fullStr | Palliative care in acute care surgery: research challenges and opportunities |
| title_full_unstemmed | Palliative care in acute care surgery: research challenges and opportunities |
| title_short | Palliative care in acute care surgery: research challenges and opportunities |
| title_sort | palliative care in acute care surgery research challenges and opportunities |
| url | https://tsaco.bmj.com/content/10/1/e001615.full |
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