Palliative Care Book of the Month and another Review
Palliative Care Book of the Month
OXFORD TEXTBOOK OF PALLIATIVE SOCIAL WORK
Terry Altilio and Shirley Otis-Green (Eds)
Oxford University Press, 2011
812 pp
ISBN 978-0-19-973911-0
RRP $US99.95 £65.00
It was a pleasure when this book landed on my desk, as I have often felt that a good social worker is probably the most important member of the palliative care team, sitting as they do across the line between the medical/nursing and the psycho/social aspects of care. In a specialty that is essentially interdisciplinary, one might ask whether we need a separate volume just about social work. This book answers that question and the editors have gone out of their way to describe the unique social work contribution whilst respecting the shared and collaborative nature of palliative care.
It is a big book – 800 plus pages, 84 chapters, 130 contributors. It is divided into eight sections: Historical Context (starting with the Lady Almoner who went on to found the modern palliative care movement, Dame Cicely Saunders); Practice in Specific Settings (including hospitals, hospice, and home as well as a number of other settings from ICU to prisons); Screening, Assessment and Intervention in Practice (including chapters on spirituality, sexuality, bereavement, and family care); Population-Specific Practice (including chapters related to cancer, HIV, pediatrics and older adults); Collaborations in Practice (covering the overlaps and interactions with all the other various members of the team); Regional Voices (providing snapshots of palliative social work from around the world and from a wide range of cultural settings); Ethics in Practice (covering the ethical dimensions of decision making, advance directives, and assisted death, amongst other topics); and Professional Issues.
There seemed to be some variation in depth between chapters, which is something the editors can aim to remedy in the next edition. But the sections I read appeared reasoned and well-written. Long lists of the names of the authors of references in the text were an unwelcome distraction and made a strong case for numerical references. And I was curious that, in a book that at least makes an effort to provide an international perspective, the chapter on hastened death provided a good view of the patient-social worker relationship, but made no mention of the problems that have occurred with the practice of hastened death outside the United States.
Those whims aside, this is an impressive book and very reasonably priced. It covers the field of palliative social work and helps set the standard. It will be invaluable for anyone training in palliative social work, but I think it will also be a useful reference for other members of the palliative care family, be they doctors or nurses or other allied health professionals, to gain a better understanding of what palliative social work is all about. And, yes, I think this volume does deserve a place next to the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine and Oxford Textbook of Palliative Nursing on the shelf in the palliative care library.
Dr. Roger Woodruff
(July 2011 )
Other Reviews
CAREGIVER STRESS AND STAFF SUPPORT IN ILLNESS, DYING, AND BEREAVEMENT
Irene Renzenbrink (Ed)
Oxford University Press, 2011
203 pp
ISBN 978-0-19-959040-7
RRP $US57.95, £29.95
This book is all about caring for the caregivers who work in hospice and palliative care. Stress, burn-out, whatever you want to call it. The opening chapter is a masterly review of the subject over the last four decades by the woman responsible for the whole discussion, Mary Vachon. There follow fifteen essays examining all aspects of the cause and management of staff stress, written by experts from a range of disciplines, operating in a variety of different economic and cultural settings. Mary Vachon warns us that this is no time for complacency towards matters surrounding staff stress and encourages us to keep thinking and talking. The spectrum of ideas on offer in this book is challenging, but if your team needs to discuss it more, then this book would be a good starting point.
***
DYING WITH COMFORT
Family Illness Narratives and Early Palliative Care
E. Wittenberg-Lyles, J. Goldsmith, S. L. Ragan and S. Sanchez-Reilly
Hampton Press, 2010
280 pp
ISBN 978-1-57273-985-7
RRP $US32.50, £28.50
Written by three health communication scholars and a palliative care physician, this book explores the value of palliative care with an emphasis on the role of family and the influence of family communication. The opening chapters provide an overview of palliative care, a catalogue of the present deficiencies in palliative care communication and training, and an introduction to family communication theory in end-of-life care. They then describe, using a lot of rich patient and family narrative, three broad scenarios: the Isolated Journey, where palliative care doesn’t get a look in; the Rescued Journey, in which palliative care is introduced very late in the course of the illness; and the Comforted Journey, which underlines the benefits of palliative care, especially if introduced early in the course of the disease. The final chapter describes how we might change teaching and practice to improve communication with patients and families—referred to as the COMFORT initiative, which is the comfort referred to in the title. This would be a most useful book for any palliative care education course, both to stimulate discussion and perhaps to learn how we might do it better.
Dr. Roger Woodruff
(July 2011 )
Dr. Roger Woodruff is a Lifetime member of the IAHPC Board and past Chair. He lives in Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia and his biography may be found at
http://www.hospicecare.com/Bio/r_woodruff.htm
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