Background And Objectives: Existing literature highlights notable health and social inequalities for people aging with a lifelong disability and the need for research to better understand how we can support this group to age well. This scoping review mapped existing literature related to "aging well" in people with lifelong disabilities.
Research Design And Methods: Five scientific databases and gray literature sources were searched for studies related to "aging well" and "lifelong disability" (defined as a disability that a person had lived with since birth or early childhood).
Sociol Health Illn
September 2022
For sociological and anthropological scholars alike, the body is both a physical and social entity as well as a project to be worked on by the self and by others (Tamari, 2020). However, scholars' conceptual work in organ transplantation and the body has tended to overlook the resultant surgical scars, yet these are borne by all transplantation recipients. For example, in understanding biomedicine's intervention in the body through the skin Shildrick (2008) uses the term 'corporeal cut' conceptually rather than focus on the flesh that is cut and the scar that subsequently forms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: People living with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis currently have few options for effective treatment and cure. Regimens that are available are toxic, may involve injections and take up to 2 years to complete treatment, with success rates as low as 50%. The TB-PRACTECAL trial is evaluating shorter, more tolerable regimens of oral drugs; we detail the substudy within this trial, PRACTECAL-PRO, which aims to evaluate patient experiences and perspectives on treatment, to understand outcomes more fully.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Older adults (>65 years) with palliative care needs are increasingly accessing the emergency department. Some interventions have been developed to improve the care provided, but the majority of research has focused on provider perspectives. Limited understanding of patient and family experiences and priorities means important needs may be overlooked.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTaking a social model of disability approach, this article explores how disabled people negotiate barriers in the large, modern hospital settings typically found in complex healthcare systems. While there is evidence of intractable barriers in the United Kingdom's National Health Service, little is known about the actions disabled people take in the face of barriers and the immediate effects of doing so. Analysis of data from a qualitative study of disabled people's healthcare encounters is presented.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople are living longer. On the whole, they have healthier lives and many of the problems previously seen at a younger age now appear in their later years. Kidneys, like other organs, age, and kidney disease in the aged is a prime example.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Emergency department-based palliative care services are increasing, but research to develop these services rarely includes input from emergency clinicians, jeopardizing the effectiveness of subsequent palliative care interventions.
Aim: To collaboratively identify with emergency clinicians' improvement priorities for emergency department-based palliative care for older people.
Design: This was one component of an experience-based co-design project, conducted using semi-structured interviews and feedback sessions.
This paper reports an ethnographic study examining health professional jurisdictions within three intensive care units (ICUs) in order to draw out the social processes through which ICU clinicians organised and delivered life-saving care to critically ill patients. Data collection consisted of 240 h observation of actual practice and 27 interviews with health professionals. The research was conducted against a backdrop of international political and public pressure for national healthcare systems to deliver safe, quality and efficient healthcare.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Increasing use of emergency departments among older patients with palliative needs has led to the development of several service-level interventions intended to improve care quality. There is little evidence of patient and family involvement in developmental processes, and little is known about the experiences of - and preferences for - palliative care delivery in this setting. Participatory action research seeking to enable collaborative working between patients and staff should enhance the impact of local quality improvement work but has not been widely implemented in such a complex setting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMedical innovations have created a future of survivorship for many groups of people with a variety of conditions that were previously untreatable or untreated. This has led not only to an expansion of medical activity in a whole variety of new areas but also to the emergence of new groups of individuals defined or defining themselves through their experiences, diagnosis and treatment. Through analysis of in-depth interviews with 27 of the now-adult survivors of the pioneer cohort of children receiving liver transplants in Britain in the early 1980s and 1990s, this paper presents how this group not only illustrate the capacities of modern medicine and healthcare to transform the survival prospects of a more diversified population, but also create new narratives of embodied identity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIncreasing longevity and prevalence of long-term conditions contribute to older adults being the greatest users of health services. However, relatively little is known about the health and illness beliefs of the oldest old or how they decide to seek help in response to symptoms. Through analysis of in-depth interviews with day centre attendees aged 80-93, we find that a moral, hierarchical approach to health problems and help-seeking exists; similar to Cornwell's (1984) findings among 50-60 year-olds of a similar social group 30 years ago.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Control of infection and prevention of healthcare associated infections is an ongoing issue worldwide. Yet despite initiatives and strategies to reduce the burden that these infections cause, healthcare workers' practice is still reported as suboptimal and these infections persist. Much of the research to date has primarily focused on predicting infection prevention behaviours and factors associated with guideline compliance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Participation of patients with heart failure in cardiac rehabilitation in the UK is low. This study investigated the availability of cardiac rehabilitation services for patients with heart failure in the UK and the views of service coordinators on ideal service models.
Design: Our study was a cross-sectional national postal survey that was mailed to 342 service coordinators in the UK between April and June 2009.
Sociol Health Illn
September 2013
Illness narratives have mainly focused on individual patients' accounts, and particularly those of people experiencing the onset of chronic illness in mid-life. However, a growing number of older people are spending their later life with their partner, with both experiencing complex morbidities. We examine the shared creation of meanings among older stroke survivors and their spouses and the implications for individual and couple identity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith increased emphasis on clinical research within the NHS, it is vital that training and educational opportunities are available to enable clinical research nurses to progress in their careers. This article describes the work of the clinical research nurse and examines the advantages and disadvantages of the role. It discusses the history of clinical research nursing and those aspects and guidelines that have shaped the way the role has developed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrim Health Care Res Dev
October 2011
Protecting or improving the efficiency and effectiveness of services while reducing costs in response to public sector funding reductions is a significant challenge for all public service organisations. Preventing falls in older people is a major public health objective. We propose here an innovative model of community partnership with Fire and Rescue Services assisting falls prevention services to enhance the safety and well-being of older people in local communities through early identification of those who are at risk of injury from a fall or accidental domestic fire.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: an anticipatory decision document records a person's wishes regarding medical treatment at a time when they have capacity to make choices, to be enacted when this capacity is lost. In England and Wales an advance decision to refuse treatment (ADRT, or advance decision), a legally binding document, is currently rarely used. A disparity is suggested to exist between physicians' support for anticipatory decisions in principle and their lack of impact on decision-making in practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF