Literature Review

Rehab patients practice skills by building hospice care packages as Oak Park police and Lincoln Rx donate supplies. Feiga Bowick connects it all.  The Detroit Jewish News; by Rochel Burstyn; 10/9/25 ... Small steps can quickly snowball and make a big difference. Feiga Bowick, LMSW, CDP, the manager of Social Services and Community Engagement at PARC Home Care and Hospice of Southeast Michigan, ... [described] her recent hospice collaboration with Life Skills Village ... a rehabilitation center mainly for patients who have developmental delays and traumatic brain injuries. “I met with their occupational therapist ...: "How could these patients help others in a way that would be helpful to their own recovery?” Bowick said. “Many patients at Life Skills Village are working on fine motor skills and organizational skills, and we decided to try and get items together so they could create care packages for PARC hospice patients — while practicing their skills.” [Continue reading this inspirational story.]

The expanding role of family medicine in Alzheimer's Disease and other dementias Patient Care; by Grace Halsey; 10/7/25 [From the 2025 Family Medicine Experience conference] Family medicine's unique position in dementia management spans initial diagnosis through end-of-life care. ... Dementia Staging: Clinical Assessment and Hospice EligibilityFor practical bedside assessment and hospice determination, the Functional Assessment Staging Tool (FAST) proves particularly valuable.1 The FAST scale includes 7 main stages, progressing from no impairment (stage 1) through severe dementia requiring total care (stage 7). Stage 7 breaks down further into substages (7a-7f) that capture specific functional losses including ambulation, independent sitting, smiling, and head control. Eligibility for hospice care generally requires FAST stage 7c or beyond, indicating ... [continue reading this important criteria] Editor's Note: Leaders must understand hospice eligibility criteria when setting census goals, guiding teams, and communicating with families. Getting it wrong risks fraudulent billing, angry caregivers when live discharges occur, or too little care that comes too late. Getting it right ensures dignity, humanity, and meaningful final moments amid dementia's long goodbyes—true measures of compassionate hospice dementia care.

Terminally ill patients would be able to use medical marijuana in Pennsylvania hospitals under new bipartisan bill Marijuana Moment; by Kyle Jaeger; 10/6/25 Bipartisan Pennsylvania senators have introduced a bill that would allow terminally ill patients to use of medical marijuana in hospitals.Similar to a law previously enacted in California, the Pennsylvania legislation from Sen. John Kane (D) and 17 bipartisan cosponsors aims to ensure that cannabis patients with severe illnesses such as cancer retain access to regulated products as an alternative treatment option.

Older COVID-19 survivors more likely to develop new-onset dementia, study finds McKnights Long-Term Care News; by Foster Stubbs; 10/3/25 Adults 50 years and older who survived COVID-19 had higher chances of developing new-onset dementia (NOD) compared to those who were not infected, according to an October study published in npj Dementia. Researchers analyzed data from 54,757 participants aged 50 years and older obtained from the UK Biobank. The sample included 16,017 participants with COVID-19 and 38,740 non-COVID participants. The COVID-19 group consisted of participants who were infected between Jan. 31, 2020 and Feb. 28, 2021, and the median observation period was about two years. 

Living with injustice: Gary Tyler had his life taken away, yet managed to claw it back. The Progressive Magazine; by Bill Lueders; 10/6/25 Just as I sat down to write this review of former death row inmate Gary Tyler’s memoir, I noticed that its publication date is the fifty-first anniversary of the day that upended his life: October 7, 1974. This undoubtedly deliberate timing, like the book itself, serves to help close the circle around Tyler’s remarkable—at times, almost unbelievable—life journey. That was the day Tyler, then a sixteen-year-old Black youth, was arrested for the shooting death of a thirteen-year-old white boy at their high school in Destrehan, Louisiana, about twenty-five miles from New Orleans. He was taken into custody and beaten so severely that he was left with permanent physical scars, as well as psychological ones. Police and prosecutors ignored and withheld evidence of his innocence, and suborned perjury by threatening witnesses. One witness, Natalie Blanks, was told she would be charged as an accessory to murder and miss out on her baby’s life if she didn’t falsely testify that she saw Tyler fire a gun from inside a bus. Stitching Freedom: A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison is, for much of its first half especially, an intensely bleak book.Editor's Note: See previous significant posts in our newsletter about Gary Tyler and this transformative hospice program at Angola Prison.

A spiritual journey: Hospice of the Valley chaplains support patients at end of life

Grieving someone who’s still here Psychology Today; by Bob Uslander, MD; 10/2/25 Grief does not always begin after death. For many families facing dementia, terminal illness, or a slow decline, it arrives before the final goodbye—quietly, persistently, and often without recognition. This is known as anticipatory grief: the emotional process of mourning a loved one who is still alive. As a palliative care physician, I see this every day. Spouses tell me they feel like they have already lost their partner. Adult children struggle with the reversal of roles, becoming the caregiver to the parent who once cared for them. Caregivers often oscillate between love, exhaustion, guilt, and detachment. None of this means they are doing it wrong. It means they are grieving.

Hospice: A vital safety net for sepsis survivors South Florida Hospital News and Healthcare Report; by Lauren Loftis, MD, VITAS regional medical director; 10/1/25Sepsis remains one of the most complex and deadly medical conditions treated in hospitals today. ... For patients with advanced illness or multiple comorbidities, the post-sepsis period is often marked by functional decline, emotional distress, and a high risk of rehospitalization or death. ...For sepsis survivors with advanced illness, hospice offers a bridge between high-intensity hospital care and the realities of life at home. It provides interdisciplinary support—including a physician, nurse, hospice aide, social worker, chaplain, volunteer, and bereavement specialist—tailored to the patient’s evolving needs.

Instilling hope: A comprehensive model of cancer care for younger adults Targeted Oncology; by Andrea Eleazar, MHS and Shane Dormady, MD, PhD; 9/29/25 In the past decade, the incidence of numerous cancer types has increased, particularly among younger adults under age 50. For younger adults, many of whom are primary breadwinners of their households or in the height of their educational or professional careers, a cancer diagnosis at this life stage can be unexpected and jarring. ... In an interview with Targeted Oncology, Shane Dormady, MD, PhD, medical director of El Camino Health Cancer Center, describes the unique needs and challenges of younger adults, outlines El Camino Health’s comprehensive care strategy, and offers insights and considerations for treating and interacting with this patient population.

Long COVID hitting doctors and nurses hard Medscape; by David Brzostowkicki; 9/3/25 Jeffrey Siegelman, MD, contracted COVID-19 in August 2020 and, 3 months later, published a paper online in JAMA about his experiences. Today, he’s still dealing with the symptoms, as one of many healthcare providers who have long COVID. He said his experience highlights the impact of long COVID on hundreds of thousands of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers, by some estimates, who have been on the frontlines fighting the pandemic from the beginning. “I reflect on that paper from JAMA, and I thought that 3 months was a long time,” said Siegelman, associate professor of emergency medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine and a practicing emergency room doctor in Atlanta. “And here I am, 5 years later, and I still have symptoms. I think that’s the case for a lot of patients with long COVID, that it just keeps getting longer.”

6 Coloradans took to the Colorado River to grieve. What they found was a way to feel less alone. The Colorado Sun, Loma, CO; by Shannon Mullane; 9/28/25 Losing a loved one leaves people reeling. It forces the body to reconfigure deep bonds and impacts health. One Colorado River retreat aims to help people navigate. ... One by one, the members — all Colorado residents who ranged in age from their 40s to their 70s — shared their stories of death and grief. It was the start of a grief therapy retreat on the Colorado River, and the clients and crew members on the trip had lost parents, children and life partners. This moment was what they came for: a chance to open up space in their day-to-day lives to grieve. With other people who know what it’s like. Without having to act like they were holding it together. ... In their seven years of operation, Podmore and Pathfinders have offered about 20 grief retreats on the Colorado River for over 160 clients of all ages — including everyone from children to seniors — mostly from the Roaring Fork Valley in western Colorado. 

A hospice intervention for caregivers: Improving home hospice management of end-of-life symptoms (I-HoME) pilot study Journal of the American Geriatrics Society; by Veerawat Phongtankuel, Sara J. Czaja, Taeyoung Park, Jerad Moxley, Ronald D. Adelman, Ritchell Dignam, Dulce M. Cruz-Oliver, Micah Denzel Toliver, M. C. Reid; 9/24/25 Background: While home-based hospice care seeks to reduce suffering at the end of life (EoL), patients continue to experience a high symptom burden. High symptom burden contributes to adverse outcomes, including patient suffering, burdensome care transitions, and caregiver burden. Yet, most caregivers lack formal education in patient symptom management despite providing up to 65 h of care per week. ... Conclusion: The I-HoME intervention was feasible to implement in the home hospice setting and acceptable to caregivers and hospice staff. Future efficacy trials are needed to determine whether this caregiver-focused intervention ... can measurably improve patient and caregiver outcomes in the home hospice setting.