PROVIDENCE – A recent study authored by Susan Miller of the Brown University Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research found that only one in five nursing homes in the United States had even basic knowledge of palliative care.
Palliative care, with its emphasis on comfort at the end of life in lieu of aggressive medical interventions, got its start in New England, with the first-in-the-nation hospice facility starting in Connecticut in the early 1970s and the second, what is now Home & Hospice Care of Rhode Island, established in Providence in 1976.
Miller said that ignorance remains profound around the country regarding even the simplest aspects of palliative care.
“While the Institute of Medicine has called for greater access to skilled palliative care across settings, the fact that one in five US nursing home directors of nursing had very limited palliative care knowledge demonstrates the magnitude of the challenge in many nursing homes,” Miller said.
The research team led by Miller found that the more directors knew about palliative care, the less likely it was for nursing home patients to experience feeding tube insertion, injections, restraints, suctioning, and trips to the emergency room.
