Achieving a person-centered approach to dialysis discontinuation: An historical perspective.

In this essay, we describe the evolution of attitudes toward dialysis discontinuation in historical context, beginning with the birth of outpatient dialysis in the 1960s and continuing through the present. From the start, attitudes toward dialysis discontinuation have reflected the clinical context in which dialysis is initiated. In the 1960s and 1970s, dialysis was only available to select patients and concerns about distributive justice weighed heavily. Because there was strong enthusiasm for new technology and dialysis was regarded as a precious resource not to be wasted, stopping treatment had negative moral connotations and was generally viewed as something to be discouraged. More recently, dialysis has become the default treatment for advanced kidney disease in the United States, leading to concerns about overtreatment and whether patients' values, goals, and preferences are sufficiently integrated into treatment decisions. Despite the developments in palliative nephrology over the past 20 years, dialysis discontinuation remains a conundrum for patients, families, and professionals. While contemporary clinical practice guidelines support a person-centered approach toward stopping dialysis treatments, this often occurs in a crisis when all treatment options have been exhausted. Relatively little is known about the impact of dialysis discontinuation on the experiences of patients and families and there is a paucity of high-quality person-centered evidence to guide practice in this area. Clinicians need better insights into decision-making, symptom burden, and other palliative outcomes that patients might expect when they discontinue dialysis treatments to better support decision-making in this area.

Osler Centenary Papers: William Osler in medical education.

William Osler combined many excellent characteristics of a clinical educator being a scientific scholar, a motivational speaker and writer and a proficient physician. As we celebrate his life a century on, many of his educational ideals are as pertinent today as they were in those Victorian times. Osler's contributions to modern medicine go beyond his legacy of quotable aphorisms to a doctor, educator and leader whose proponent use of bedside teaching, careful clinical methods, and clinicopathological correlation was a great inspiration for students and junior doctors. He was also a great advocate of patient-centred care-listening to and closely observing his patients, an important message for modern medicine as the reliance on investigations strains modern healthcare systems. This review of Osler's contribution to medical education summarises his development as an educator and provides reflection on his influences to modern clinical education.

Understanding care in the past to develop caring science of the future: a historical methodological approach.

In this paper, we explore how the development of historical research methodologies during the last centuries can contribute to more diverse and interdisciplinary research in future caring science, especially towards a care focus that is more person-centred. The adding of a historical approach by professional historians to the theory of person-centredness and person-centred care can develop knowledge that enables a more holistic understanding of the patient and the development of the patient perspective from the past until today. Thus, the aim was to show how developments within historical methodology can help us to understand elements of care in the past to further develop caring science in future. Historical research methodologies have advocated a "history from below" perspective, and this has enabled the evolution of systematic approaches to historical research that can be explored and critically analysed. Linked with this, the development of a more social and cultural oriented understanding of historical research has enabled historians to explore and add knowledge from a broader societal perspective. By focusing on the life of ordinary people and taking social and cultural aspects into account when trying to reconstruct the past, we can get a deeper understanding of health, care and medical development. However, an interdisciplinary research focus on person-centredness and person-centred care that includes professional historians can be challenging. In this paper, we argue that a historical perspective is necessary to meet the challenges we face in future delivery of health care to all people, in all parts of society in an ever more global world.

Evolution of an Evidence Collaboration: From Initial Goals to Current Initiatives.

Best practices based on evidence are needed by every clinician to provide safe, effective, patient-centered care. Determining best practice for a given situation can be difficult. Ideally, the clinician understands how to critically appraise the relevant research, and integrates high-quality research with interdisciplinary clinical expertise and patient and family values and preferences to choose best care for an individual or family. At our organization, we are taking the integration of research, clinical expertise, and patient/family preferences and values to the next level by aligning the evidence work of multiple functional areas and disciplines to improve the safety and effectiveness of clinical practice. The Evidence Collaboration, an interdisciplinary community of practice, has evolved to meet the challenges of helping novices and experts of all disciplines identify, critically appraise, synthesize, and disseminate evidence to inform best practices for patients and families, staff, and institutional processes. By creating a common language for evidence work, resources such as the Let Evidence Guide Every New Decision system, and templates for dissemination, the Evidence Collaboration has moved the organizational culture toward one that encourages the use of evidence in all decisions. Our progress continues as we strive to include patients and families in the decisions about best practices based on evidence.

History and evolution of surgical ethics: John Gregory to the twenty-first century.

As surgery grew to become a respected medical profession in the eighteenth century, medical ethics emerged as a response to the growing need to protect patients and maintain the public's trust in physicians. The early influences of John Gregory and Thomas Percival were instrumental in the formulation of patient-centered medical ethics. In the late nineteenth century, the modern surgical advances of anesthesia and antisepsis created the need for a discipline of ethics specific to surgery in order to confront new and evolving ethical issues. One of the founding initiatives of the American College of Surgeons in 1913 was to eliminate unethical practices such as fee-splitting and itinerant surgery. As surgery continued to advance in the era of solid organ transplantation and minimally invasive surgery in the latter half of the twentieth century, surgical innovation and conflict of interest have emerged as important ethical issues moving forward into the twenty-first century. Surgical ethics has evolved into a distinct branch of medical ethics, and the core of surgical ethics is the surgeon-patient relationship and the surgeon's responsibility to advance and protect the well-being of the patient.

Review of the history and development in the field of psychosocial oncology.

Psychosocial oncology is a multi-disciplinary field of practice and, as a recently developed speciality, covers the psychological, social and behavioural dimensions of cancer. We describe the historical background and changing ethos in medical practice in order to understand factors that contributed to the emergence of this new discipline. Modern psychosocial oncology covers a number of topics; the diagnosis and management of psychological morbidity and distress across the cancer continuum from diagnosis through survivorship and, for some patients, terminal illness, the recognition that behaviour and lifestyle contribute to cancer risk and prognosis, the need to include families and carers alongside patients in a comprehensive model of supportive cancer care. Best practice, based on evidence and nationally and internationally accepted guidelines, is being integrated into national cancer plans, and services are briefly described. Future challenges include the need to recognize that the behavioural and mental health sciences have a role to play in comprehensive cancer care and that multi-disciplinary care, which includes psychosocial care, is the best model for ensuring patients needs are comprehensively and adequately met. The return of modern medicine to a more holistic person-focused ethos is needed in order to put the patient back into patient-centred cancer care.

Edmund Pellegrino and the art of civilized dialectics.

I had the good fortune to work with Edmund Pellegrino from 2005 until 2009, while he was chairman and I was a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. We came from different disciplines--medicine and law--and from different generations. Until that point, our paths had rarely crossed. I am so glad that I finally did have an opportunity to get to know him. Pellegrino contributed a great deal to the council during his time as chairman. I cannot begin to cover all that he brought to the council during his four years of leadership. In this essay, I describe how his views of both public bioethics and clinical ethics shaped his council participation.

Thoughts on "looking back on 50 years in hospital administration" from the perspectives of quality and safety.

The healthcare landscape has changed considerably over the past 50 years, with far greater emphasis on the quality of care. Although much progress has been made, there are many opportunities to improve quality and safety of care across Canada. The new Saskatchewan healthcare management system represents one whole-system approach to achieving better health, better care, better value and better teams, using a Lean-based approach that reflects the dominant issues identified 50 years ago.

Putting patients first. A conversation with Benjamin Chu, M.D., the new chair-elect of the AHA.

The son of immigrants, Benjamin Chu, M.D., has followed an unusual life path from New York's Chinatown to Southern California, where he is now an executive with Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Health Plan. Dismayed by the daunting challenges facing health care, the AHA chair-elect became a strong believer that the system can and must change, always keeping the focus firmly on the patient.

Patient-based continuum of care in nephrology: why read Thomas Addis' "Glomerular Nephritis" in 2010?

The name of Thomas Addis (1881-1949) is linked to several aspects of nephrological practice: from the "Addis count" of urinary elements, to the history of diet in chronic kidney diseases. He was accustomed to working with limited funds, and developed his theories with relatively simple means, combined with the careful, long-term observation of single cases. His political ideas were progressive; his outlook on life was optimistic. This is deeply reflected in his Glomerular Nephritis: Diagnosis and Treatment, a book worth reading in the era of chronic kidney disease (CKD), as it contains sharp analyses of the organizational aspects, and accurate comments on the role of the physician - all subjects of interest for the present times and challenges. One of Addis' ingenious ideas was to follow his patients throughout their lifelong disease, thus anticipating the theories of continuum of care and of therapeutic alliance between patients and physicians. He used to tailor his prescriptions and frequency of controls to each patient and phase of the disease, thus anticipating the tailored therapies and the patient empowerment presently considered as fundamental in chronic diseases. Furthermore, he suggested that physicians should work outside the hospital in small coordinated teams, in which volunteers, dietitians and laboratory technicians would play a crucial role. Patient-centered care and the importance of nonmedical team members are clear from the first lines of his book. As far as we know, he was the first physician to stress the role of volunteers in CKD, anticipating by decades nonprofit organizations such as the National Kidney Foundation.

Mechanizing medicine - Tomorrows history started yesterday.

History is by nature a retrospective subject, there usually being an interval between any event, a review or impact of the subject being considered. This NPSA Historian's paper, takes a long and quick historical view of influences that fostered changes resulting in the current state of affairs in the field of medicine and medical care. The fields of medicine and surgery, are undergoing rapid changes as a result of technological and other advances that are making tomorrow's medical history seemingly happening yesterday. Prospectively, the impact of current change and its rapidity has the potential to radically change the future practice of the art and craft of our profession.

Exploring Current Evidence on the Past, the Present, and the Future of the Heart Team: A Narrative Review.

INTRODUCTION: Including healthcare professionals dealing with cardiovascular diseases, Heart Team is a concept/structure designed for selecting diagnostic strategies, facilitating therapeutic decisions, and improving cardiovascular outcomes in patients with complex heart pathologies, requiring input from different subspecialties and the necessity of a multidisciplinary approach. The aim of this narrative review is to search for and to summarize current evidence regarding Heart Team and to underline the future directions for the development of this concept. METHODS: We searched the electronic database of PubMed, SCOPUS, and Cochrane CENTRAL for studies including Heart Team. Forty-eight studies were included, if reference was made to Heart Team structure and functionality. RESULTS: We depicted the structure and the timeline of Heart Team, along with actual evidence-based recommendations from European Guidelines. We underlined the importance of quality of knowledge-sharing and decision-making inside the Team, analyzing bad decisions which did not reflect members' true beliefs due to "uniformity pressure, closed mindedness, and illusion of invulnerability." The observation that Guidelines' indications regarding Heart Team carry a level C indication underlines the very future of this Team: randomized controlled trials proving solid benefits in an evidence-based world. CONCLUSIONS: Envisioned as a tool for optimizing the management of various complex cardiovascular pathologies, Heart Team should simplify and facilitate the activity in the cardiovascular ward. Finally, these facts should be translated into better cardiovascular outcomes and a lower psychological distress among Team participants. Despite all future changes, there must always be a constant part: the patient should remain at the very center of the Team.

Whose centre is it anyway? Defining person-centred care in nursing: An integrative review.

AIM: The aims of this literature review were to better understand the current literature about person-centred care (PCC) and identify a clear definition of the term PCC relevant to nursing practice. METHOD/DATA SOURCES: An integrative literature review was undertaken using The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Medline, Scopus and Pubmed databases. The limitations were English language, full text articles published between 1998 and 2018 within Australian, New Zealand, Canada, USA, Europe, Ireland and UK were included. The international context off PCC is then specifically related to the Australian context. REVIEW METHODS: The review adopted a thematic analysis to categorise and summarise themes with reference to the concept of PCC. The review process also adhered to the Preferred Reporting System for Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) and applied the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tools to ensure the quality of the papers included for deeper analysis. RESULTS: While definitions of PCC do exist, there is no universally used definition within the nursing profession. This review has found three core themes which contribute to how PCC is understood and practiced, these are People, Practice and Power. This review uncovered a malalignment between the concept of PCC and the operationalisation of the term; this misalignment was discovered at both the practice level, and at the micro, meso and micro levels of the healthcare service. CONCLUSION: The concept of PCC is well known to nurses, yet ill-defined and operationalised into practice. PCC is potentially hindered by its apparent rhetorical nature, and further investigation of how PCC is valued and operationalised through its measurement and reported outcomes is needed. Investigation of the literature found many definitions of PCC, but no one universally accepted and used definition. Subsequently, PCC remains conceptional in nature, leading to disparity between how it is interpreted and operationalised within the healthcare system and within nursing services.

The evolution of family-centered care.

AIM: The aim of this study is to explore the history of family-centered care (FCC). BACKGROUND: FCC was developed after Word War II, when nursing, then deeply paternalistic, had become asynchronous with changing social expectations for the care of hospitalized children. METHODS: This is a historical review of literature reflecting development of pediatric models of care using publications of classic theorists and others. RESULTS: Development of FCC resulted from work by U.S. and UK researchers, theorists, and advocates. Their research was right for its time, and its acceptance was the result of social readiness for change resulting from people's experience of Word War II. CONCLUSION: Word War II brought about changes enabling emergence of lobby groups concerned with children in hospital, awakening of pediatric health professionals to family-oriented practice, and development of models of care that allowed widescale adoption of FCC.

International schizophrenia research and the concept of patient-centredness: an analysis over two decades.

BACKGROUND: Patient-centred medicine improves psychological and physiological functioning in chronic illnesses. AIMS: To determine to what extent the patient-centred ethos (as exemplified by research addressing subjective experiences) was incorporated into work presented at major international schizophrenia research forums between 1988 and 2004. METHOD: Whole population-based, retrospective cohort study using abstracts from the International Congress on Schizophrenia Research and the Biennial Winter Workshop on Schizophrenia (n = 9,284). Comparative analysis using abstracts from the International Society for the Psychological Treatment of Schizophrenia (n = 992). Patient-centredness was assessed by determining the number of abstracts that primarily addressed participants' subjective experiences. RESULTS: Research was presented from 50 countries globally. European and North American countries produced 8,573 (92%) of the total. Biological research was the main theme of 6,960 (75%) of the abstracts, with psychosocial research constituting less than 5%. One hundred and eighty three (2%) abstracts from the two main conferences addressed subjective experiences, as did 333 (34%) from the comparative analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Between 1988 and 2004 research emanating from North American and European countries, together with biologically orientated research, were the most prevalent perspectives on schizophrenia. It appears that research into the subjective experiences of participants has not been as prevalent as more objective accounts of the disorder, suggesting that this research effort has not been patient-centred.

'Family-centred care' in American hospitals in late-Qing China.

Today, patients' families in the West are regaining the access to hospitals that they lost when hospitals emerged as the primary site for medical treatment, research and training at the beginning of the twentieth century. In China, however, families were never excluded from American mission-run hospitals, in fact, they were indispensable. Families were in the waiting rooms, consulting rooms,wards and operating theatres. They provided more than reassurance and comfort: they fed and nursed their sick relatives, acted as advocates and middlemen and may even have lowered the incidence of cross-infection, the scourge of the contemporary hospital in the West.

Doctor-patient communication: a historical overview.

Doctor-patient communication is an issue that is attracting more and more attention within the international scientific community, stimulating an interest involving many different health contexts, from academic to medico-legal ones. In the academic setting, the insertion of health communication courses into the curriculum has been a recent renovation, given that in the past such training was not considered a necessary formative step. In the medico-legal scenario, among the main causes of legal action is an incorrect, incomplete or non-existent transmission of information. Doctor-patient communication is therefore an extremely up-to-date topic, the problematic of which may already be discerned in Western medicine in the so-called Hippocratic Oath. In this paper the historical roots and the evolution through time of doctor-patient communication are discussed, together with the description of the predominant models of communication of the past (the physician-centred and the disease-centred approaches) and of the present (the patient-centred and the person-centred paradigms). Nowadays complete, correct and comprehensible communication is a primary exigency for the physician, for the patient/person and for all the organizational levels of the sanitary system. Every physician and, more in general, every health operator, must therefore learn to communicate effectively in the course of his/her medical training, and must continually refine this capacity during his/her professional career.