Never say die: death euphemisms, misunderstandings and their implications for practice.

Background: A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on death and dying was conducted to open the dialogue around death and dying. In one activity, participants were asked to engage with language and to think of alternative words (or euphemisms) that are used to describe death.

Aim: To reflect from a nursing perspective how language enables and sometimes disguises important messages and conversations.

The disparity between patient and nurse symptom rating in a hospice population.

Background: Meticulous assessment, monitoring, and treatment of symptoms are key components of palliative care. The Symptom Assessment Scale (SAS) is a 0-10 numerical rating scale (NRS) used for self-report of sleep, appetite, nausea, bowels, breathing, fatigue, and pain. Ideally, symptom rating should be by self-report; however, the ratings are often completed by nurses.