Strategies used by respiratory nurses to stimulate self-management in patients with COPD.

Aims And Objectives: To gain an insight into strategies, adopted by Dutch respiratory nurses during clinic sessions, to improve self-management of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is highly prevalent and a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, impacting on quality of life and healthcare expenditure. Health promotion is therefore an important consideration.

Physicians' opinions on palliative care and euthanasia in the Netherlands.

Background: In recent decades significant developments in end-of-life care have taken place in The Netherlands. There has been more attention for palliative care and alongside the practice of euthanasia has been regulated.

Objective: The aim of this paper is to describe the opinions of physicians with regard to the relationship between palliative care and euthanasia, and determinants of these opinions.

Requests to forgo potentially life-prolonging treatment and to hasten death in terminally ill cancer patients: a prospective study.

This study investigates the background and evolution of requests to forgo treatment and hasten death in terminally ill cancer patients. Physicians participating in a nationwide study on end-of-life decision making were asked whether they were treating a terminally ill cancer patient whose life expectancy was longer than 1 week but no longer than 3 months and who they would continue to treat until the patient's death. Of the 120 physicians who had a patient who met the inclusion criteria, 85 (70.

Differences between terminally ill cancer patients who died after euthanasia had been performed and terminally ill cancer patients who did not request euthanasia.

Palliative care, directed at improving the quality of life of terminally ill patients, is generally not aimed at any form of postponing or hastening death. It is possible that high quality palliative care could prevent requests for euthanasia. However, empirical evidence on this issue is scarce.

Dutch experience of monitoring euthanasia.

Doctors in the United Kingdom can accompany their patients every step of the way, up until the last. The law stops them helping their patients take the final step, even if that is the patient's fervent wish. Next month's debate in the House of Lords could begin the process of changing the law.

Symptoms, treatment and "dying peacefully" in terminally ill cancer patients: a prospective study.

Goals: The aims of this study were to describe the symptoms, their treatment during the final months of life of terminally ill cancer patients and to assess characteristics of the dying process.

Patients And Methods: We used a prospective study design. From a representative sample of physicians who participated in a study of end-of-life decision making, we asked whether they were treating a patient with cancer whose treatment was no longer aimed at cure, whose life expectancy was probably longer than 1 week but no longer than 3 months and who would probably continue to be treated by the same physician until their death; 85 physicians completed a monthly questionnaire until patients' deaths.

Being a palliative care nurse in an academic hospital: a qualitative study about nurses' perceptions of palliative care nursing.

The original philosophy of palliative care emphasizes the importance of the integration of compassion and medical science. The meaning palliative care nurses assign to their relationships with patients has been described in several studies. This qualitative research was undertaken in order to elicit the way nurses working on a palliative care ward in an academic hospital perceive their role and gain insight into the problems they encounter.

Moral problems experienced by nurses when caring for terminally ill people: a literature review.

This article is a review of the literature on the subject of how nurses who provide palliative care are affected by ethical issues. Few publications focus directly on the moral experience of palliative care nurses, so the review was expanded to include the moral problems experienced by nurses in the care of the terminally ill patients. The concepts are first defined, and then the moral attitudes of nurses, the threats to their moral integrity, the moral problems that are perceived by nurses, and the emotional consequences of these moral problems are considered in turn.