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Welcome to Hospice & Palliative Care Today, a daily email summarizing numerous topics essential for understanding the current landscape of serious illness and end-of-life care. Teleios Collaborative Network podcasts review Hospice & Palliative Care Today monthly content - explore these and all TCN Talks podcasts.
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2. Integrating care across the life course supports goal-aligned end-of-life care
3. Personalized sedation goals for agitated end-of-life delirium: Secondary analysis of RECORD trial
4. Top ten tips palliative care clinicians should know when caring for seriously ill patients with stimulant use disorders
5. Palliative care and hospice utilization in patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma in the era of CART and novel immunotherapies
6. Missed opportunities for goals-of-care conversations in a patient with end-stage juvenile Huntington’s disease: A case report
7. Compassionate leadership: Is it compatible with profit-driven health care?
8. Nonmaleficence, professionalism, and the medical relationship
9. Understanding a clinical ethics consult: Survey of parents
11. [Italy] Spiritual care: When spirituality engages medicine
The role of hospice and palliative care in addressing climate change
American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Medicine; by Erik S. Carlson, Nisha Shah, Jill Denny, Aldebra Schroll, Daniel Mahoney, Sarah Schear, Kate Jennings, Collins Uzuegbu, David Harris, Bhargavi Chekuri, Cecilia Sorensen, Janet Bull, Chris Jones; 8/26
Climate change is a defining global health challenge of our time, acting as a threat multiplier that erodes decades of health gains and worsens social inequities. People living with serious illness, the population served by Hospice and Palliative Care (HaPC) professionals, are particularly vulnerable to these impacts. While leading health organizations have acknowledged the public health implications of climate change, HaPC has remained largely absent from this discourse. This narrative review and framework proposal situates the field’s competencies within the growing climate and health literature and identifies avenues through which HaPC can contribute to addressing climate change. We argue that HaPC professionals — drawing on strengths in serious illness communication, interdisciplinary collaboration, and person-centered care — are uniquely positioned to advance equitable climate adaptation and mitigation at the individual, organizational, and societal levels.
Integrating care across the life course supports goal-aligned end-of-life care
Nature - Communications Medicine; by M. Courtney Hughes; 7/26
As global populations age and lifespan increases, health systems too often conceptualize “healthy aging” and “end-of-life care” as distinct phases. Yet emerging evidence from geroscience, palliative care, and health systems science suggests that aging and dying lie on a continuum of adaptation and care.
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Journal of Pain & Symptom Management; by Hsien Liang Huang, Shao-Yi Cheng, Jaw-Shiun Tsai, Allison de la Rosa, Jen-Kuei Peng, Chien-An Yao, David Hui; 8/26
Top ten tips palliative care clinicians should know when caring for seriously ill patients with stimulant use disorders
Journal of Palliative Medicine; by Rebekka DePew, Nicole Dussault, Kyle Quirk, Erin Vipler, Josh Borris, Sandra DiScala, Teddy Scheel, Katrina Nickels, Gregg Robbins-Welty, Janet Ho; 8/26
Stimulant use disorder (StUD) is common in the hospice and palliative care (PC) setting, though guidance for clinicians remains limited. Stigma around stimulant use is widespread and can lead to impaired clinician/patient communication, poor symptom control, and lower quality of care. PC clinicians should be able to diagnose StUD, understand the potential pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic management options, engage with patients in a trauma-informed way, and refer to addiction medicine colleagues when appropriate. When utilizing opioids for pain management, PC clinicians should be aware of the impact of stimulant use on opioid risk and toxicity. In this article, a multidisciplinary group of PC, hospice, addiction medicine, psychiatry, ethics, and pharmacy clinicians presents ten practical tips for caring for seriously ill patients with current or prior StUD.
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Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (CART) has changed treatment for relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (r/r DLBCL), but most patients still die of their disease and may benefit from palliative care (PC) or hospice services. We conducted a single-center retrospective study for deceased patients with r/r DLBCL to evaluate PC and hospice utilization before and after CART introduction ... PC referral rates were similar between eras (57.5% vs 70.5%, ... ), as were hospice referrals (79.3% vs 83.2%, ... ). However, patients in the post-CART era had shorter time from last treatment to death (95 vs 51 days, ... ), higher hospitalization rates in the last 30 days of life (57.5% vs 72.6%, ... ), and more in-hospital deaths (19.5% vs 33.7%, ... ). Overall, 20-30% of patients were never referred to PC or hospice.
Missed opportunities for goals-of-care conversations in a patient with end-stage juvenile Huntington’s disease: A case report
American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Medicine; by Ignacio Borque, Nuria Perez ´ de Lucas, Alicia Gonzalez, Eduardo Bruera; 8/26
Juvenile Huntington’s disease (JHD) is a rare, severe neurodegenerative disorder with early onset, high symptom burden, and a predictable trajectory toward advanced disability and premature death. Despite this, goals-of-care (GOC) conversations and advance care planning are often delayed, leading to reactive, crisis-driven decisions and increased emotional burden for families and clinicians. We present a 30-year-old woman with genetically confirmed JHD, diagnosed at age 14, who declined progressively over more than 15 years. Despite longstanding neurological follow-up and repeated hospital admissions, palliative care referral occurred only 20 days before death. Late palliative care integration limited anticipatory planning and shifted complex decisions into a stage with little room for deliberation, when cognitive and clinical deterioration constrained meaningful participation.
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Nurse Leader; by Mark White, Jennifer Graebe; 8/26
The Journal of Clinical Ethics; by Lynn A. Jansen; Fall 2026
Does the principle of nonmaleficence in medicine need updating? This article engages with these questions by critically discussing the relation-centered view of nonmaleficence presented by Christopher Crenner and Skylar Bird. The proposal to focus on relational harms in the medical relationship is a good one, but such a proposal must be integrated into a more comprehensive account of the principle of nonmaleficence. This more comprehensive account relates relational harms to medical professionalism and derives the content of the principle of nonmaleficence from the standards of acceptable medical practice. After clarifying this more comprehensive view of medical nonmaleficence, the article concludes by responding to an important autonomy-based objection to it. This response raises large and difficult questions about the nature and point of medical practice in modern societies.
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Objective: To explore parents’ understanding of clinical ethics consults, what might influence their openness to an ethics consult in the future, and what they define as medical ethics. Results: Most respondents (63%) [that were surveyed] were not familiar with ethics consults and did not know how to request one (88%). For those reporting interest in a future ethics consult, knowing more about how ethics consults could help (71%) and a doctor’s recommendation (58%) would most influence their interest. Hesitancy in speaking with an ethics consultant most often stemmed from worry that their child/family would not be understood (77%). Parents defined “medical ethics” as relating to serious medical conditions (67%), communication with the medical team (61%), and goals of care (57%). Conclusions: Pediatric ethics consultation is not a commonly recognized or utilized resource for families facing medical complexity and ethical challenges.
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MDPI; by Martina Vanzo, Stefania Palmisano; 8/26
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The Fine Print:
Paywalls: Some links may take readers to articles that either require registration or are behind a paywall. Disclaimer: Hospice & Palliative Care Today provides brief summaries of news stories of interest to hospice, palliative, and end-of-life care professionals (typically taken directly from the source article). Hospice & Palliative Care Today is not responsible or liable for the validity or reliability of information in these articles and directs the reader to authors of the source articles for questions or comments. Additionally, Dr. Cordt Kassner, Publisher, and Dr. Joy Berger, Editor in Chief, welcome your feedback regarding content of Hospice & Palliative Care Today. Unsubscribe: Hospice & Palliative Care Today is a free subscription email. If you believe you have received this email in error, or if you no longer wish to receive Hospice & Palliative Care Today, please unsubscribe here or reply to this email with the message “Unsubscribe”. Thank you.