Browsing by Person "Murray, Scott A."

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Health-promoting palliative care arrives in Scotland
(Hayward Medical Communications, 2010) Haraldsdottir, Erna; Clark, Pam; Murray, Scott A.
Openness about death and dying has been seen as beneficial for dying patients and their families ever since the pioneering work of Cicely Saunders in the 1960s. Despite this, death and dying is still a taboo subject in most European countries. In 2003, a survey of the Scottish public reported that most people felt society did not discuss death and dying in a 'realistic way' and considered the subject of death as taboo. The survey called for further engagement with the public to promote open discussion about death and dying.
Integrating lived experiences of out-of-hours health services for people with palliative and end-of-life care needs with national datasets for people dying in Scotland in 2016: A mixed methods, multi-stage design
(SAGE, 2022-03-30) Mason, Bruce; Carduff, Emma; Laidlaw, Sheonad; Kendall, Marilyn; Murray, Scott A.; Finucane, Anne; Moine, Sebastien; Kerssens, Joannes; Stoddart, Andrew; Tucker, Sian; Haraldsdottir, Erna; Ritchie, Sir Lewis; Fallon, Marie; Keen, Jeremy; Macpherson, Stella; Moussa, Lorna; Boyd, Kirsty
Background:: Unscheduled care is used increasingly during the last year of life by people known to have significant palliative care needs. Aim:: To document the frequency and patterns of use of unscheduled healthcare by people in their last year of life and understand the experiences and perspectives of patients, families and professionals about accessing unscheduled care out-of-hours. Design:: A mixed methods, multi-stage study integrating a retrospective cohort analysis of unscheduled healthcare service use in the last year of life for all people dying in Scotland in 2016 with qualitative data from three regions involving service users, bereaved carers and general practitioners. Setting:: Three contrasting Scottish Health Board regions and national datasets for the whole of Scotland. Results:: People who died in Scotland in 2016 (n = 56,407) had 472,360 unscheduled contacts with one of five services: telephone advice, primary care, ambulance service, emergency department and emergency hospital admission. These formed 206,841 individual continuous unscheduled care pathways: 65% starting out-of-hours. When accessing healthcare out-of-hours, patients and carers prioritised safety and a timely response. Their choice of which service to contact was informed by perceptions and previous experiences of potential delays and whether the outcome might be hospital admission. Professionals found it difficult to practice palliative care in a crisis unless the patient had previously been identified. Conclusion:: Strengthening unscheduled care in the community, together with patient and public information about how to access these services could prevent hospital admissions of low benefit and enhance community support for people living with advanced illness.
Mapping the progress and impacts of public health approaches to palliative care: a scoping review protocol
(2016-07-14) Archibald, Daryll; Patterson, Rebecca; Haraldsdottir, Erna; Hazelwood, Mark; Fife, Shirley; Murray, Scott A.
Introduction: Public health palliative care is a term that can be used to encompass a variety of approaches that involve working with communities to improve people's experience of death, dying and bereavement. Recently, public health palliative care approaches have gained recognition and momentum within UK health policy and palliative care services. There is general consensus that public health palliative care approaches can complement and go beyond the scope of formal service models of palliative care. However, there is no clarity about how these approaches can be undertaken in practice or how evidence can be gathered relating to their effectiveness. Here we outline a scoping review protocol that will systematically map and categorise the variety of activities and programmes that could be classified under the umbrella term 'public health palliative care' and highlight the impact of these activities where measured. Methods and analysis: This review will be guided by Arksey and O'Malley's scoping review methodology and incorporate insights from more recent innovations in scoping review methodology. Sensitive searches of 9 electronic databases from 1999 to 2016 will be supplemented by grey literature searches. Eligible studies will be screened independently by two reviewers using a data charting tool developed for this scoping review. Ethics and dissemination: This scoping review will undertake a secondary analysis of data already collected and does not require ethical approval. The results will facilitate better understanding of the practical application of public health approaches to palliative care, the impacts these activities can have and how to build the evidence base for this work in future. The results will be disseminated through traditional academic routes such as conferences and journals and also policy and third sector seminars.
Stories from people living with frailty
(Cambridge University Press, 2019-08-09) Lloyd, Anna; Haraldsdottir, Erna; Kendall, Marilyn; Murray, Scott A.; McCormack, Brendan
We describe the findings of a qualitative longitudinal interview study of a group of initially community dwelling frail older people, their informal and formal carers. We used a narrative approach to explore the role that narrative may have for people living with frailty. This has been less explored comparative to the experiences of those living with chronic illness. The frail older people told stories of their experiences that revealed three distinct shapes or typologies. These were either stable, unbalancing or overwhelmed and related to how the person managed to adapt to increasing challenges and losses and to reintegrate their sense of self into a cohesive narrative. Each is illustrated by an individual case story. Frailty is described as both biographically anticipated yet potentially biographically disruptive as older people may struggle to make sense of their circumstances without a clear single causative factor. Findings are discussed in relation to biographical disruption and reconstruction in chronic illness and the rhetoric around ‘successful ageing’. We conclude by drawing attention to the complex individual and social factors that contribute to the experience of living with frailty in later life.