Supporting Interprofessional Engagement in Serious Illness Conversations: An Adapted Resource.

Communication is vital to quality palliative care nursing particularly when caring for someone with a chronic life-limiting illness and their family. Conversations about future decline and preferred care are considered challenging and difficult and are often avoided, resulting in missed opportunities for improving care. To support more, earlier, better conversations, health care organizations in British Columbia, Canada, adopted the Serious Illness Care Program inclusive of the Serious Illness Conversation Guide developed by Ariadne Labs.

Evaluation of the Utility of the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (revised) Scale on a Tertiary Palliative Care Unit.

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the utility of the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (ESAS-r) Scale on a tertiary palliative care unit.

Method: There were 92 admitted patients who participated in the study; the scale was administered to those able to participate on day 1 (n = 35, 38 percent), on day 4 (n = 20, 21 percent), and weekly. Patient comfort level with the ESAS-r tool was assessed using a 5-point Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree) on day 4.