Transforming Palliative Care in Nursing Homes: The Social Work Role

This book brings together experts from nursing, law, medicine, sociology, and social work to provide insights and information about palliative care in nursing homes. It employs a broad definition of palliative care as comfort care that is appropriate across the illness experience and not limited to the end of life. Because a majority of nursing home residents are older adults facing multiple, advanced chronic conditions, this book is grounded in the provision of palliative care-especially palliative psychosocial care-for people with advanced chronic illness who live in nursing homes. Yet its practice and recommendations can also be applied to other long-term care settings, such as assisted living.Mercedes Bern-Klug combines scholarship with practice wisdom. Each of her chapters mixes a review of scholarly literature with insights gleaned from clinical practice. Chapter topics comply with the eight domains of palliative care developed by the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care. Some focus on care of the resident, while others concern the resident’s family. One section covers self-care for nursing home staff members, while another discusses nursing home rituals marking the death of a resident. Bern-Klug concludes with an overview of the factors that are likely to affect the future of palliative for people with advanced chronic illness.