PRIMARY PALLIATIVE CARE
Dying, death and bereavement in the community.
Rodger Charlton (Ed)
|
Radcliffe Medical Press, 2002
234 pp
ISBN 1-85775-573-1
RRP £27.95 $US 59.35
|
The increasing involvement of general practitioners and the primary health care team in the delivery of palliative care to patients
and their families in the community is a welcome, albeit slow, development. The goal of this book is to provide ‘a description of the pertinent issues that constitute primary palliative care.’
This book covers a wide range of issues. There are useful chapters on clinical governance, the role of the primary health care team in palliative care, communication, care for
caregivers, and ethics. But I was concerned that the chapters on pain and symptom control were possibly too brief to be practically useful. The discussion on complementary therapies lacked any
scientific vigor. And placing Kubler-Ross’ stages of acceptance (as seen in the patient, pre-mortem), in the same box with Parkes’ stages of bereavement (as seen in the relatives, post-mortem)
was, I thought, a bit confusing.
Roger Woodruff
Director of Palliative Care, Austin Health, Melbourne, Australia
(April 2004)
Author Information
Dr. Rodger Charlton is Senior Lecturer, Continuing Professional Development, Centre for Primary Health Care Studies, University of Warwick, UK.
Table of Contents
1. The development of palliative care within primary care
2. Clinical governance in palliative care
3. Communication with the dying and their loved ones
4. Pain control in palliative care
5. Symptoms other than pain
6. Complementary therapies in palliative care
7. Out of hours and emergency palliative care
8. Palliative care of non-malignant conditions
9. Role of the PHCT in palliative care
10. Plight of the informal carer
11. Spirituality and ethnicity
12. Ethics and the dying
13. Thinking about bereavement
14. Drawing up and applying a PDP in palliative care
15. Teamwork and education through Significant Event Audit and Practice Professional Development
16. A journey through cancer - views of a patient
