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Palliative care, with its focus on symptom management, patient-centered goals, preparation for life's end, and preservation of quality of life in the face of advancing illness, is a rapidly advancing component of mainstream American medicine. Yet, access to palliative care is often lacking in the community setting and may be further hindered by the presence of healthcare disparities that impact the poor. This article presents a unique approach to assuring the availability of palliative care to Medicaid patients receiving case management services. This descriptive article describes the evolution of a palliative care management pilot program, the Caring Connections Program, beginning with the initial planning and progressing through implementation and provision of services to 56 persons. "Lessons learned" are shared to enable other providers to develop similar programs with success. Patient profiles and intervention strategies are offered to illustrate the work accomplished.

Any hospice professional can identify the syndrome known as terminal restlessness, and all would agree that it is extremely distressing to patients as well as their families and caregivers. Often, caregivers cannot ameliorate the anguish many patients experience at life's end. Many clinicians assert that the causes are physical resulting from medication toxicity, organ shutdown and the associated metabolic changes, pain, urinary or fecal retention, dyspnea and related hypoxia, and sepsis. Yet, many also credit psychosocial and spiritual distress as precipitating factors. The purposes of this study were twofold: to compare the perceptions of practicing hospice clinicians with the literature related to terminal restlessness, and to determine if their experience with terminal restlessness agreed with the components of the one established scale for terminal restlessness found in the literature. In general, the study findings corresponded to the literature in regards to frequency, definition, causes, and behavioral manifestations of terminal restlessness. The clinicians in the study supported the impact of psychosocial and spiritual causes of terminal restlessness and defined the phenomenon in terms of time period; emotional, physical, and spiritual distress; changes in consciousness; and increased activity. However, the study did not support the inclusion of impaired consciousness and withdrawal as comprised in the terminal restlessness scale.

Last Acts released the first nationwide evaluation of palliative care services in November 2002. Each state was evaluated or "graded" on the following eight measures: advance care planning policies, location of death, hospice use, hospital end-of-life care services, care in ICUs at the end of life, pain among nursing home residents, state pain policies, and palliative care certified physicians and nurses. Kentucky scored well on state pain policies and number of nurses certified in palliative care but received low grades for hospital services and the number of patient deaths occurring in the home. This manuscript explores Kentucky's deficiencies and accomplishments related to the Last Acts evaluation and addresses opportunities for improving end-of-life care across the Commonwealth.

Purpose: To evaluate the content validity and nursing sensitivity of six community-level outcomes from the Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC; Johnson, Maas, & Moorhead, 2000)., Design and Methods: A survey research design was used. Questionnaires were mailed to 300 public health nursing experts; 102 nurses responded. Experts evaluated between 11 and 30 indicators for each of the six outcomes for: (a) importance of the indicators for measuring the outcome, and (b) influence of nursing on the indicators. Content validity and nursing sensitivity of the outcomes were estimated with a modified Fehring technique., Findings: All outcomes were deemed important; only Community Competence had an outcome content validity score < .80. The outcome sensitivity score for Community Health: Immunity was .80; other outcome scores ranged from .62-.70. Indicator ratios for all 102 indicators met the study criterion for importance, with 87% designated as critical and 13% as supplemental. Sensitivity ratios reflected judgments that 45% of the indicators were sensitive to nursing intervention., Conclusions: The study provided evidence of outcome content validity and nursing sensitivity of the study outcomes; further validation research is recommended, followed by testing of the study outcomes in clinical practice. Community-level nursing-sensitive outcomes will potentially enable study of the efficacy and effectiveness of public health interventions focused on improving health of populations and communities.

A survey research design was used to assess the importance, sensitivity to nursing interventions, and content validity of six client outcomes from the Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC)). Outcomes relevant for elderly community residents and caregivers were included in a questionnaire mailed to American Nurses Credentialing Center-certified expert community health nurses. Two hundred thirty-nine experts rated specific indicators of the six outcomes for their importance in determining the outcomes and the contribution of nursing to their achievement. Outcomes also were rated for their importance for community health nursing clients and responsiveness to community health nursing intervention. Results strongly support the content validity and nursing sensitivity of outcomes and specific indicators. Experts judged all six outcomes to be important and 90% of indicators as important in determining the outcome. All outcomes and 78% of indicators were judged to be responsive to community health nursing intervention. Recommendations include the testing of NOC outcomes in community health nursing clinical practice and inclusion in community health nursing curricula. Areas for further research include development and validation of community-level outcomes, validation of outcomes with rural and home health nursing experts, and exploration of the community health nursing-sensitivity of one study outcome.

Objective: A variety of cervical ripening agents exist, yet none is ideal. We performed a prospective, randomized, double-masked comparison of low-dose minimal-escalation oxytocin to misoprostol in a predominantly high-risk population., Study Design: Patients were allocated prospectively in a double-masked, randomized, stratified basis by an investigational pharmacist between December 1996 and December 2000 to receive either active intravenous oxytocin and placebo intravaginal misoprostol or intravenous placebo oxytocin and 50 microg of active intravaginal misoprostol. The infusion rate of oxytocin was increased from 1 to 4 mU/min; misoprostol (25 microg) was repeated at 4 hourly intervals if there were <3 uterine contractions per 10-minute interval., Results: Demographic characteristics did not differ between study groups nor did the indications for induction. Overall, the interval to delivery was less in the misoprostol group; however, vaginal delivery occurred in 61% versus 66% (not significant) of patients in the misoprostol versus oxytocin group. Indication for cesarean delivery in the misoprostol group was fetal intolerance to labor in 27% compared with 8% in the oxytocin groups (P <.05), whereas labor abnormalities were more commonly the cause in the oxytocin group versus misoprostol (26% vs 10%, P <.05). The proportion of patients was similar in each group overall and when evaluated on the basis of parity and when delivery was compared at 12, 24, and 36 hours after the initiation of cervical priming., Conclusion: Our data indicate that misoprostol and low-dose minimal-escalation oxytocin appear to be equally effective for cervical priming. Low-dose oxytocin may have a preferential role in the high-risk parturient whose fetus is at increased risk for fetal intolerance to labor

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine maternal and neonatal outcomes of women who were delivered because of severe preeclampsia before 25 weeks of gestation., Study Design: We used a computerized database to identify 3800 women with preeclampsia among 35,937 deliveries from 1991 to 1997. Of these, 39 women (1%) with severe preeclampsia were delivered before 25 weeks of gestation. We abstracted outcomes in these women and their newborns., Results: All 39 women had severe preeclampsia as defined by clinical and/or laboratory criteria. Thirty-three of the 39 women had severe-range hypertension. Twenty-one women (54%) experienced morbidity that included abruptio placentae (n = 5), HELLP (hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, and low platelet count) syndrome (n = 9), renal insufficiency (n = 5), and eclampsia (n = 3). No women required dialysis or intensive care unit admission, and none of the women died. All maternal morbidities reversed after delivery. Twenty-two infants (55%) were live-born. Only 4 infants (10%) survived, all with severe handicaps., Conclusion: In women with severe preeclampsia before 25 weeks of gestation, delivery is associated with minimal short-term maternal morbidities, although neonatal morbidity and death are appreciable.

Objective: To estimate whether the cesarean delivery rate differs between women with severe preeclampsia who receive intrapartum epidural analgesia versus patient-controlled intravenous opioid analgesia., Methods: Women with severe preeclampsia at at least 24 weeks' gestation were randomly assigned to receive either intrapartum epidural (n = 56) versus patient-controlled intravenous opioid analgesia (n = 60), and each was administered by a standardized protocol. The sample size was selected to have 80% power to detect at least a 50% difference in the predicted intergroup cesarean delivery rates. Data were analyzed by intent to treat., Results: Selected maternal characteristics and neonatal outcomes were similar in the two groups. The cesarean delivery rates in the epidural group (18%) and the patient-controlled analgesia group (12%) were similar (P =.35). Women who received epidural analgesia were more likely to require ephedrine for the treatment of hypotension (9% versus 0%, P =.02), but their infants were less likely to require naloxone at delivery (9% versus 54%, P <.001). Epidural analgesia provided significantly better pain relief as determined by a visual analogue intrapartum pain score (P <.001) and a postpartum pain management survey (P =.002)., Conclusion: Compared with patient-controlled intravenous opioid analgesia, intrapartum epidural analgesia did not significantly increase the cesarean delivery rate in women with severe preeclampsia at our level III center, and it provided superior pain relief.