The capacity of countries with high HIV and AIDS prevalence to provide antiretroviral treatment and care for all people who need support remains a public health challenge. In Lesotho, there are improvements in this area but the high proportion of people who need ART yet they do not receive treatment suggests that many HIV-infected people continue to depend on medicines that treat opportunistic ...

Parental requests for gastrostomies, tracheostomies, or assisted ventilation in children with profound disabilities raise ethical concerns about children's interests, parental decision-making, and health care costs. The underlying concern for many relates to the perceived value of these children. Clinicians should make efforts to appreciate the family's perspective regarding children with profo...

BACKGROUND It is important to know and decide when to end regimen for the quality of life of the patients. However, there is currently no clear agreement on when to terminate palliative chemotherapy. We investigated the duration between the last chemotherapy and death, and associated factors affecting patients receiving palliative care after the last chemotherapy. METHODS We studied 242 patie...

Elderly patients frequently present with surgical emergencies to health care providers, and outcomes in this group of patients remain poor. Contributing factors include frailty, preexisting comorbidity, polypharmacy, delayed diagnosis, and lack of timely and consultant-led treatment. In this review, we address common emergency surgical presentations in the elderly and highlight the specific cha...

Researchers have identified the phenomena of moral distress through many studies in Western countries. This research reports the first study of moral distress in Iran. Because of the differences in cultural values and nursing education, nurses working in intensive care units may experience moral distress differently than reported in previous studies. This research used a qualitative method invo...

One definition of futility is any treatment that merely preserves permanent unconsciousness or fails to end total dependence of a patient on intensive medical care [1] . However, no agreement has ever been reached on what the exact definition of futility is, as it is not only based on temporary values but also evolves into different subtypes, making it harder to define [2] . The difficulty in d...

Abstract Introduction A Treatment Escalation Plan (TEP) is a communication tool which helpful when person with serious illness has potential for acute deterioration. This policy fully supports the national guidance and recommendations published in joint statement by Resuscitation Council (UK) Royal College of Nursing (2016) latest Gerneral Medical (2010) relating to treatment care towards end-o...