Understanding Experiences in Hospice: Exploring Temporal, Occupational, and Relational Dimensions Using Pictor Technique.

Temporality, occupation, and relationships are identified as discrete factors that impact quality of life for individuals at the end of life and those around them. However, scholars, practitioners, and educators require insights regarding whether and how interactions between these factors shape this quality of life. This study is framed by an understanding that meaning is negotiated between people through social interaction and occupational engagement in temporal contexts.

Can a complex adaptive systems perspective support the resiliency of the heart failure patient - informal caregiver dyad?

Purpose Of Review: A holistic palliative approach for heart failure care emphasizes supporting nonprofessional informal caregivers. Informal caregivers play a vital role caring for heart failure patients. However, caregiving negatively affects informal caregivers' well being, and in turn heart failure patients' health outcomes.

Patients with heart failure and their partners with chronic illness: interdependence in multiple dimensions of time.

Background: Informal caregivers play a vital role in supporting patients with heart failure (HF). However, when both the HF patient and their long-term partner suffer from chronic illness, they may equally suffer from diminished quality of life and poor health outcomes. With the focus on this specific couple group as a dimension of the HF health care team, we explored this neglected component of supportive care.

Transition to palliative care when transcatheter aortic valve implantation is not an option: opportunities and recommendations.

Purpose Of Review: Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is the recommended treatment for most patients with symptomatic aortic stenosis at high surgical risk. However, TAVI may be clinically futile for patients who have multiple comorbidities and excessive frailty. This group benefits from transition to palliative care to maximize quality of life, improve symptoms, and ensure continuity of health services.

Understanding palliative care on the heart failure care team: an innovative research methodology.

Context: There is a growing call to integrate palliative care for patients with advanced heart failure (HF). However, the knowledge to inform integration efforts comes largely from interview and survey research with individual patients and providers. This work has been critically important in raising awareness of the need for integration, but it is insufficient to inform solutions that must be enacted not by isolated individuals but by complex care teams.

Case series assessing the safety of mycophenolate as part of multidrug rescue treatment regimens.

Background: Mycophenolate mofetil (MMF), an inhibitor of lymphocyte proliferation, is emerging as a potential adjunct in the treatment of HIV-1 infection. By potentiating the activity of abacavir, MMF may improve antiviral efficacy. However, it may also lead to myelosuppression, such as was seen in patients taking hydroxyurea-containing regimens.