Practical nursing recommendations for palliative care for people with dementia living in long-term care facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic: A rapid scoping review.
Sascha R Bolt, Jenny T van der Steen, Irma Mujezinović and 7 others
PMID 33080475WHAT IT FOUND
Practical nursing recommendations for palliative dementia care in long-term care during COVID-19 were mapped from reviewed documents and cover advance care planning, psychological care, recognizing dying, and family support.
Key findings
01The review produced a final set of practical recommendations for nursing staff on palliative dementia care in long-term care during the COVID-19 crisis.
02Advance care planning and psychological aspects of care were the domains with the most articles informing recommendations, while cultural aspects of care were not found.
03Nursing staff were advised to review advance care plans with doctors and families, ideally before a COVID-19 diagnosis or loss of cognitive capacity, and to document wishes in accessible files.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The searches were not fully systematic. Relevant documents may have been missed because the COVID-19 literature grew rapidly and search terms may have overlooked them. Only English or Dutch documents were included. The recommendations were not ranked by importance. No structured quality assessment of the included documents was performed. The review summarizes available guidance rather than testing whether any recommendation changes patient outcomes.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these recommendations as proof that they improve palliative care. The paper maps existing guidance and did not test interventions or patient outcomes.