Families speak about inpatient end-of-life care.

Death is an emotional event that leaves lasting memories for the bereaved. This article describes the qualitative analysis of a mailed family survey addressing experiences with community hospital inpatient end-of-life care. Family members identified and appreciated symptom management and caring behaviors such as compassion and communication; they also noted the absence of these caring behaviors.

Family-driven quality improvement in inpatient end-of-life care.

To enhance end-of-life care in a community hospital system, an interdisciplinary team designed and implemented a mail survey to obtain feedback from families of inpatients who died. The 855 completed surveys (a 31% response rate) demonstrate that bereaved families are willing to give feedback on care received from nurses and physicians and attention paid to the personal needs of patients and families. The team used families' feedback to shape quality improvement initiatives and focused on questions with comparatively lower scores: physician communication, physician compassion, and family understanding of what to expect as their loved one approached the end of life.

Comparison of methods of measuring pulmonary artery pressure.

Background: Pulmonary artery waveforms fluctuate because of changes in intrathoracic pressure caused by respirations. Monitoring system algorithms determine digital displays of pressure measurements on the basis of recognition, analysis, and comparison of consecutive waveforms.

Objective: To compare three methods of measuring pulmonary artery pressure during mechanical ventilation and spontaneous breathing in cardiac surgery patients with stable hemodynamics.