Offering spiritual support to dying patients and their families through a chaplaincy service.

Despite its importance in end of life care, spiritual care is poorly addressed. This article presents the results of an innovative service in which nurses notify hospital chaplains of all patients placed on the Liverpool Care Pathway and the chaplains then visit to offer spiritual support to both patients and their carers. Nurses reported that the service was valuable not only for patients and their families but also for themselves and the whole clinical team. All nurses said they wanted the service to continue.

Nucleophilicity in ionic liquids. 2.(1) Cation effects on halide nucleophilicity in a series of bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ionic liquids.

In this work, the nucleophilicities of chloride, bromide, and iodide have been determined in the ionic liquids [bmim][N(Tf)(2)], [bm(2)im][N(Tf)(2)], and [bmpy][N(Tf)(2)] (where bmim = 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium, bm(2)im = 1-butyl-2,3-dimethylimidazolium, bmpy = 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium, and N(Tf)(2) = bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide). It was found that in the [bmim](+) ionic liquid, chloride was the least nucleophilic halide, but that changing the cation of the ionic liquid affected the relative nucleophilicities of the halides. The activation parameters DeltaH(), DeltaS(), and DeltaG() have been estimated for the reaction of chloride in each ionic liquid, and compared to a similar reaction in dichloromethane, where these parameters were found for reaction by both the free ion and the ion pair.