Textbooks fall short on end-of-life care -- study
Chicago -- The first study to rank the end-of-life content in a wide range of medical textbooks found that most offered little information on how to care for dying patients.
Researchers analyzed 50 leading textbooks for coverage of 13 end-of-life care topics, including pain and other symptom management, psychological issues, social and demographic issues, spiritual issues, and ethics, law and policies regarding this issue. They found content to be lacking for 56.9% of these measures, minimally covered for 19.1% and provided for 24.1%.
Social, spiritual, ethical and family issues, as well as physician after-death responsibilities, were covered least well. In many instances, general textbooks had better information than specialty texts. "Unfortunately, specialty textbooks that physicians might read for information about a particular disease often did not contain helpful information about caring for patients dying from that disease," wrote the authors in the Feb. 9 Journal of the American Medical Association.
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