American Academy of Nursing Expert Panel consensus statement on nursing's roles in ensuring universal palliative care access.

The purpose of this consensus paper was to convene leaders and scholars from eight Expert Panels of the American Academy of Nursing and provide recommendations to advance nursing's roles and responsibility to ensure universal access to palliative care. Part I of this consensus paper herein provides the rationale and background to support the policy, education, research, and clinical practice recommendations put forward in Part II. On behalf of the Academy, the evidence-based recommendations will guide nurses, policy makers, government representatives, professional associations, and interdisciplinary and community partners to integrate palliative nursing services across health and social care settings. The consensus paper's 43 authors represent eight countries (Australia, Canada, England, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, South Africa, United States of America) and extensive international health experience, thus providing a global context for the subject matter. The authors recommend greater investments in palliative nursing education and nurse-led research, nurse engagement in policy making, enhanced intersectoral partnerships with nursing, and an increased profile and visibility of palliative nurses worldwide. By enacting these recommendations, nurses working in all settings can assume leading roles in delivering high-quality palliative care globally, particularly for minoritized, marginalized, and other at-risk populations.

Putting the mouth back in the head: HEENT to HEENOT.

Improving oral health is a leading population health goal; however, curricula preparing health professionals have a dearth of oral health content and clinical experiences. We detail an educational and clinical innovation transitioning the traditional head, ears, eyes, nose, and throat (HEENT) examination to the addition of the teeth, gums, mucosa, tongue, and palate examination (HEENOT) for assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of oral-systemic health. Many New York University nursing, dental, and medical faculty and students have been exposed to interprofessional oral health HEENOT classroom, simulation, and clinical experiences. This was associated with increased dental-primary care referrals. This innovation has potential to build interprofessional oral health workforce capacity that addresses a significant public health issue, increases oral health care access, and improves oral-systemic health across the lifespan.

Community discussions: a vision for cutting the costs of end-of-life care.

Palliative care involvement with patients with advanced disease has demonstrated significant cost savings at end of life (EOL). These financial benefits are largely due to improved EOL decision making. Assisting patients and families to examine their values and determine their preferences makes it possible to match patient goals with appropriate care. Often, comfort-oriented care is favored, avoiding the costs of medically aggressive, often futile, technology-driven interventions. Community-based EOL care discussions would demonstrate increased cost reductions while facilitating significant patient and family satisfaction with care.