IAHPC BOOK REVIEWS
by Dr. Roger Woodruff
Palliative Care Book of the Month:
Palliative Care Formulary 4e
Robert Twycross and Andrew Wilcock (Eds)
2011
799 pp
ISBN 978-0-9552547-5-8
RRP £49.99. Available from www.palliativedrugs.com
I can remember what a breath of fresh air the first edition was. Clear, well set-out monographs providing just about all that you needed to know about the drugs used in palliative care; and generously referenced. Well here, after thirteen years, is the fourth edition. Much bigger, updated and covering a wider range of medications, but with the same attention to detail. There are new chapters on the drugs that may be needed to avoid crises in home care and another on drug treatment in the imminently dying. There are a number of new drug monographs and mini-monographs. I thought the Quick Practice Guides that translate the detail into practical everyday usage in less than two pages (e.g. psychostimulants in depressed patients with a short prognosis) were particularly useful.
Although the drugs listed and the pricing are focused on the UK, this is an invaluable resource for anyone working in palliative care.
If you run a palliative care ward or service, this book should be available on the bookshelf. At the risk of repeating myself, this book is first-class and highly recommended.
Other Reviews:
Death, Dying, and Social Differences 2e
David Oliviere, Barbara Monroe, and Sheila Payne (eds)
Oxford University Press, 2011
226 pp
ISBN 978-0-19-959929-5
RRP £34.99 $US67.95
This book is about the holes in palliative care. It is written about the circumstances in the UK, but the messages apply everywhere. It’s about whether or not palliative care services are delivering optimal palliative care to people of diverse socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, beliefs, abilities, and sexual orientations (to mention a few). There are chapters on elderly people, teenagers, vulnerable adults, people with mental health needs, the homeless, travelers and gypsies, asylum seekers, substance mis-users, people of different sexual orientation, and prisoners.
I agree that we should be aware of the palliative care needs of these groups, and I found the discussions of how to try and provide meaningful palliative care interesting.
One theme that does come out of this book is the benefit of cross-boundary care. People with expertise in managing the primary problem joining forces with people with expertise in palliative care.
But the book left me worrying about whether or not it might lead to less care for your ordinary Jack or Jill. I remember completing a questionnaire a few years ago that basically asked how much of some new government funding should go to these marginalized groups. At the time, I had half a dozen patients in acute hospital beds (in metropolitan Melbourne), ordinary folk with nothing to do with the groups listed above, who could not get access to a hospice/palliative care bed where they would have been better managed. Socialism is fine until the other person runs out of money and this book underlines the vexing problem for policy-makers as to where they put their limited $s or £s. But perhaps in the UK they have palliative care for the mainstream perfectly covered.
And should terminally ill patients be released from prison to die at home? The release of the Lockerbie bomber, to be feted on the streets of Tripoli, was not a good advertisement.
Death with Dignity: Legalized Physician-Assisted Death in the United States 2011
Stuart C. Goldberg Esq.
No publisher cited
ISBN 978-1463 65084 1
RRP $US 26.50
Written by an attorney, this is a self-help manual for Oregonians and Washingtonians to help them understand and use their (wonderful, new) Death with Dignity Acts, and a guide for people and legislators in the other 48 states who want similar laws. I thought it was a bit macabre, certainly sad.
Viewed from afar, the absolutely miniscule number of people who have committed suicide under the Oregon Act, together with the fact that many were categorized as possibly being able to be helped by other compassionate interventions, brings into question the need for these laws.
In Australia, voting is compulsory. If you are 18 or over, you vote. So, if a referendum for physician-assisted suicide was passed here, I would have to sit back and acknowledge that that was what more than 50% of the population wanted. I have not seen the voter turn-out figures when these Acts were passed, but I suspect they were not high.
I was amused by some of the detail. Were I to give a patient a supply of lethal medication with which they subsequently took their life, the terms ‘suicide’ and ‘assisted suicide’ would certainly come into it. But to call it that is against the law in Oregon. Reminded me of Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass.
I suppose people working in palliative care need to know the book is out there.
Roger Woodruff, MD (Australia)
February 2012
Dr. Woodruff is a Lifetime Member of the IAHPC Board; his bio is at http://www.hospicecare.com/Bio/r_woodruff.htm
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Dr Roger Woodruff
IAHPC Bookshop Editor
210 Burgundy St, Suite 9
Heidelberg, Victoria 3084
AUSTRALIA
Note: Review copies become property of IAHPC and are not returned to the author. Only palliative care related books which are previously approved will be reviewed. Due to the large number of requests, we can't provide exact dates of when books will be reviewed.
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