Future policy and research for advance care planning in dementia: consensus recommendations from an international Delphi panel of the European Association for Palliative Care.

Advance care planning (ACP) is increasingly recognised in the global agenda for dementia care. The European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) Taskforce on ACP in Dementia aimed to provide recommendations for policy initiatives and future research. We conducted a four-round Delphi study with a 33-country panel of 107 experts between September, 2021, and June, 2022, that was approved by the EAPC Board. Consensus was achieved on 11 recommendations concerning the regulation of advance directives, equity of access, and dementia-inclusive approaches and conversations to express patients' values. Identified research gaps included the need for an evidence-based dementia-specific practice model that optimises engagement and communication with people with fluctuating and impaired capacity and their families to support decision making, while also empowering people to adjust their decisions if their goals or preferences change over time. Policy gaps included insufficient health services frameworks for dementia-inclusive practice. The results highlight the need for more evidence and policy development that support inclusive ACP practice models.

Medico-legal assessment of personal damage in older people: report from a multidisciplinary consensus conference.

Ageing of the global population represents a challenge for national healthcare systems and healthcare professionals, including medico-legal experts, who assess personal damage in an increasing number of older people. Personal damage evaluation in older people is complex, and the scarcity of evidence is hindering the development of formal guidelines on the subject. The main objectives of the first multidisciplinary Consensus Conference on Medico-Legal Assessment of Personal Damage in Older People were to increase knowledge on the subject and establish standard procedures in this field. The conference, organized according to the guidelines issued by the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), was held in Bologna (Italy) on June 8, 2019 with the support of national scientific societies, professional organizations, and stakeholders. The Scientific Technical Committee prepared 16 questions on 4 thematic areas: (1) differences in injury outcomes in older people compared to younger people and their relevance in personal damage assessment; (2) pre-existing status reconstruction and evaluation; (3) medico-legal examination procedures; (4) multidimensional assessment and scales. The Scientific Secretariat reviewed relevant literature and documents, rated their quality, and summarized evidence. During conference plenary public sessions, 4 pairs of experts reported on each thematic area. After the last session, a multidisciplinary Jury Panel (15 members) drafted the consensus statements. The present report describes Conference methods and results, including a summary of evidence supporting each statement, and areas requiring further investigation. The methodological recommendations issued during the Conference may be useful in several contexts of damage assessment, or to other medico-legal evaluation fields.

[Notes of method to imagine an education tailored to the future]. / Appunti di contenuto-metodo per immaginareun percorso formativo a misura del futuro.

. Notes of method to imagine an education tailored to the future. Health and social inequalities represent a problem not only from an ethical point of view but also from the point of view of public and social health. Unfortunately, this issue remains confined to conferences and debates and is not yet the subject of a serious reflection on how to constructively and permanently incorporate it in the education of health professionals, to provide the skill to read and interpret data, and to make research. This contribution, in addition to providing some reflections, launches an initiative that aims at incorporating these contents in the basic education, to make the message of Florence Nightingale real: wounds, suffering, dying and the absurdity of disability can be taken care of, be part of the care, only if you learn to recognize the causes, which are not only in the medical domain.

The last week of life of nursing home residents with advanced dementia: a retrospective study.

BACKGROUND: Barriers to palliative care still exist in long-term care settings for older people, which can mean that people with advanced dementia may not receive of adequate palliative care in the last days of their life; instead, they may be exposed to aggressive and/or inappropriate treatments. The aim of this multicentre study was to assess the clinical interventions and care at end of life in a cohort of nursing home (NH) residents with advanced dementia in a large Italian region. METHODS: This retrospective study included a convenience sample of 29 NHs in the Lombardy Region. Data were collected from the clinical records of 482 residents with advanced dementia, who had resided in the NH for at least 6 months before death, mainly focusing on the 7 days before death. RESULTS: Most residents (97.1%) died in the NH. In the 7 days before death, 20% were fed and hydrated by mouth, and 13.4% were tube fed. A median of five, often inappropriate, drugs were prescribed. Fifty-seven percent of residents had an acknowledgement of worsening condition recorded in their clinical records, a median of 4 days before death. CONCLUSIONS: Full implementation of palliative care was not achieved in our study, possibly due to insufficient acknowledgement of the appropriateness of some drugs and interventions, and health professionals' lack of implementation of palliative interventions. Future studies should focus on how to improve care for NH residents.

[The voice of nurses on cuts and restructurations of National Health Systems]. / La voce degli infermieri sui tagli e le ristrutturazioni dei sistemi sanitari.

. The recent global economic recession has affected nursing working conditions in terms of salary reductions, increased workload and staff shortages. Poor nursing working conditions are associated with higher levels of burnout. A literature review was conducted to identify contributions of European nurses from 2010 on the consequences of the economic crisis on the health services. Only few contributions were identified and from a limited number of countries (UK, Italy, Spain and Greece).

[Contact with death or illness and career choice in non-medical healthprofessions and business students: a cross-sectional analysis]. / Contatto con morte, malattia e scelta della carriera nelle professioni sanitarie non mediche e negli studenti di economia: un'analisi trasversale.

UNLABELLED: . Contact with death or illness and career choice in non-medical health professions and business students: a cross-sectional analysis. PURPOSE: It is anecdotally reported that a personal severe illness or the death of a significant person might be key reasons for the choice of a career in the non-medical health professions. AIM: The aim of the questionnaire was to explore past relevant life events before starting professional studies (severe personal illness; severe illness or death of a significant person; drug addiction of a relative or friend) by comparing students of nursing or other non medical health professions with business students. METHODS: An anonymous questionnaire with standardized closed questions was distributed in 2010 to a group of bachelor students of non-medical health professions (nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and rescue care) and to a control group of business students at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland. RESULTS: Students of non-medical health professions had been, compared to business students, significantly more exposed to severe illnesses or the death of a relative (OR 3.070, CI95% 1.716-5.494), to personal severe illness (OR 3.950, CI95% 1.384-11.279) and to addiction of a relative or friend (OR 2.672, CI95% 1.316-5.422) before starting their professional studies. CONCLUSIONS: This cross-sectional analysis suggests that exposure to a severe illness or death may play an important role in the choice of career, probably by supporting intrinsic motivations. Further research should explore the role of those past life experience in professional behavior.

[Economic impact of AFId management with modern management system in Intensive Care patients: comparison between ICUs]. / Impatto economico di gestione dell'IFAd nei pazienti in Terapia Intensiva con i moderni sistemi di gestione FMS: confronto tra Rianimazioni.

. Economic impact of AFId management with modern management systems in Intensive Care patients: comparison between ICUs. INTRODUCTION: Acute fecal incontinence associated with diarrhea (AFId) affects up to 40% of intensive care unit (ICU) patients and may be responsible for pressure ulcers (PU). The FMS (Fecal Management System) though improving the management of these patients is not often provided due to its cost. AIM: To measure the costs of the use of FMS compared to routine care in three intensive care units (ICU) of Piedmont (Italy). METHODS: All patients admitted from January to June 2016, > 18 years with at least three AFId episodes in the previous 24 hours were included. The costs for hygiene, medications and nursing time spent were calculated on 10 patients without FMS, accounting for the mean number of diarrhea attacks (3.04 per day), and mean days of FMS use. RESULTS: The FMS generated savings compared to routine care in nursing time, equipments for hygiene and pressure sores medications in patients with sacral sores. Savings depended on length of use (LoU) of the device: ICU with 10 patients (7 with PUs), mean LoU FMS 11.9 days, savings 1.210 euros; ICU with 10 patients (2 with PUs), mean LoU FMS 17.3 days, savings 5.317 euros; ICU with 45 patients (11 with PUs) mean LoU FMS 9.3 days, cost increase 1.057 euros. The cost of FMS is quickly amortised in patients with PUs. No FMS patients developed a new PUs. CONCLUSIONS: The FMS gives rise to savings when used in patients with PUs or for more than 10 days. The savings related to the prevention of PUs should be also added.

Should patients perception of health status be integrated in the prognostic assessment of heart failure patients? A prospective study.

PURPOSE: Health status measures are widely recognized as providing substantial information on heart failure (HF) patients conditions and prognosis, but they are not included in the data routinely collected. The aim of the study was to assess in a prospective cohort of HF patients, the independent prognostic value of health status measured with the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ) on mortality and hospital admissions over a period of 3.3 years. METHODS: Eighty-three Italian cardiology centers included all their patients randomized in the GISSI-HF trial in an observational outcome study where the KCCQ was administered at baseline by nursing personnel. A total of 1,465 outpatients with chronic HF, NYHA classes II-III, with coronary and non-coronary etiology were included and followed up for mortality and admissions. RESULTS: The effect of baseline perception of health status on mortality and all causes hospitalizations was explored with Cox proportional hazard regression models progressively adjusted for several variables. When stratified according to pre-defined criteria, lower values of KCCQ scores (<25) as compared with best scores (>75) were predictive of mortality (1.85; 95 % CI 1.16-2.95) but not of hospital admissions risk (p for trend significant for mortality with decreasing scores). Lower KCCQ scores discriminated the risk also within the NYHA II and III classes. CONCLUSIONS: KCCQ scores provide a clinically important and statistically robust independent prognostic information on hard outcome endpoints of HF patients on the top of the clinical scores. It is suggested that KCCQ should become a routine component of the patients care and of prognostic profiles.

Differences in life expectancy by education and occupation in Italy, 1980-94: indirect estimates from maternal and paternal orphanhood.

In the present study, we use the modified orphanhood method to analyse mortality differences by socio-economic status in Italy. This technique permits the indirect estimation of adult mortality from survey-based information on parents' survival in developed populations and helps to overcome several limitations of conventional studies on mortality differences by social class. We estimate a time series of life tables by education and occupation and analyse the differences in life expectancy by socio-economic status along with their changes between 1980-84, 1985-89, and 1990-94. Whereas mortality differences between the highest social class and the other socio-economic status groups increased among men, they decreased among women. We speculate about the reasons for these sex-specific trends and evaluate the application of indirect estimation techniques to the populations of developed countries.

[Risk factors for one year hospitalization and death of 615 home care patients with multidimensional assessment]. / Fattori di rischio per i'ospedalizzazione ed il decesso ad un anno in 615 pazienti assistiti in cure domiciliari sottoposti a valutazione multidimensionale.

INTRODUCTION: The District care activities are often presented as number of patients, interventions or home visits. A better description should render more visible the persons and their clinical problems whose outcomes should be monitored. AIM: To prospectically monitor the outcomes in a sample of home care patients followed for one year. METHODS: Six hundred sixty two home care patients of two Local Health Units of Veneto Region with at least two nurses visits per month had a multidimensional assessment and were followed for one year. RESULTS: At the end of follow-up 32% of patients had died, 3.9% had been admitted to a Nursing home; 41.9% had at least one hospital admission and for 49.7% the number of nursing visits was increased. Closeness to death and inadequate family support were independently associated to an increased risk of hospital admission, while patients with severe cognitive impairment tend to be admitted to hospital less frequently. Of the 216 bedridden patients those with inadequate family support are at higher risk for death and hospital admissions. CONCLUSIONS: Home care informative systems allow to assess and monitor the more severe patients thus producing information useful for the continuous improvement of caring processes.

Outpatient assessment of neurovisual functions in children with Cerebral Palsy.

This study examined the feasibility of the Atkinson Battery for Child Development for Examining Functional Vision (Atkinson, Anker, Rae, et al., 2002) to evaluate neurovisual functions of children with neurodevelopmental disorders in outpatient setting. A total of 90 patients underwent a comprehensive evaluation. Among these, a group of 33 children with Cerebral Palsy (CP), mean age 6 years, with different types of CP (26% diplegic, 37% hemiplegic and 37% tetraplegic) were selected to constitute the cohort of the study. Visual sensory measures as well as higher level visual functions were considered. Overall, 73% patients had impairments at the assessment protocol, the majority of which presenting difficulties on both visuoperceptual and visuospatial tasks (79%). Subgroups of participants presented similar profiles of impairments with spared basic visuocognitive abilities and limitations in visuoperceptual and visuospatial domains. The Atkinson's battery proved to be valuable for evaluation in outpatient setting and follow-up testing. Some limitations emerged. For the definition of personalized and detailed rehabilitation programs a breakdown of the different components of vision and subsequent in-depth evaluation are needed.