Background: Digital equity denotes that all individuals and communities have equitable access to the information technology required to participate in digital life and can fully capitalize on this technology for their individual and community gain and benefits. Recent research highlighted that COVID-19 heightened the existing structural inequities and further exacerbated the technology-related social divide, especially for racialized communities, including new immigrants, refugees, and ethnic minorities. The intersection of challenges associated with racial identity (eg, racial discrimination and cultural differences), socioeconomic marginalization, and age- and gender-related barriers affects their access to health and social services, education, economic activity, and social life owing to digital inequity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In rural settings, relationships between place and self are often stronger than for urban residents, so one may expect that rural people would view dying at home as a major feature of the 'good death'.
Aim: To explore the concept of the 'good death' articulated by rural patients with life-limiting illnesses, and their family caregivers.
Design: Ethnography, utilising open-ended interviews, observations and field-notes.
Residential aged care (RAC) is a significant provider of end-of-life care for people aged 65 years and older. Rural residents perceive themselves as different to their urban counterparts. Most studies describing place of death (PoD) in RAC are quantitative and reflect an urban voice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To describe the place of death of residents in a rural region of New South Wales.
Design: Cross-sectional quantitative study using death data collected from local funeral directors (in person and websites), residential aged-care facilities, one multipurpose heath service and obituary notices in the local media (newspapers/radio).
Setting: Snowy Monaro region (New South Wales Australia).
Background: End-of-life care must be relevant to the dying person and their family caregiver regardless of where they live. Rural areas are distinct and need special consideration. Gaining end-of-life care experiences and perspectives of rural patients and their family caregivers is needed to ensure optimal rural care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe 'good death' is one objective of palliative care, with many 'good death' viewpoints and research findings reflecting the urban voice. Rural areas are distinct and need special consideration. This scoping review identified and charted current research knowledge on the 'good' rural death through the perspectives of rural residents, including rural patients with a life-limiting illness, to identify evidence and gaps in the literature for future studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPandemic influenza has been a concern since the documentation of the 1918 "Spanish" flu. The potential for a novel flu virus to emerge and cause a global pandemic is real and present. Every year many people suffer severe morbidity and mortality to the seasonal strain of the flu, and a pandemic with a novel virus increases those numbers.
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