Optimal palliative care cannot be realized unless nurses have a full understanding of what the patient's family is experiencing. There is a gap in nursing knowledge related to informal care and ethnic minorities. The aim of this retrospective qualitative exploratory study was to investigate the experiences of Bangladeshi informal carers living in the UK, associated with caring for a dying relative. Semi-structured interviews using an interpreter were carried out and patient notes were examined. Four categories emerged from the data: caring, support, communication, and home and family. In addition to the demands and stresses caused by their relative's symptoms and the knowledge that they were dying, the Bangladeshi carers experienced communication barriers, isolation and anxieties regarding visas and housing--yet all were uncomplaining about their situation. Palliative care nurses working with Bangladeshi families need to be aware of the additional stresses that these families may experience and be able to offer strategies to enable them to cope with them.

Based upon four themes that emerged from a previous qualitative descriptive study (Somerville, 2003), 85 items were developed and submitted to nurse and patient experts for content validity, readability, and understandability. The resulting 77-item scale was administered to 327 patients and 296 complete surveys were analyzed. A four-component solution, consistent with the themes from the qualitative study, was devised using principal-component analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation. A component loading cut-off was set at 0.3, resulting in a reliable and valid 48-item scale. This scale will aid nurse assessment of the impact of the current healthcare environment on the patient experience.

The purpose of this qualitative study, using a modified grounded theory approach, was to investigate how palliative care nurses care for people from cultural backgrounds other than their own. Ten palliative care nurses were interviewed. The semi-structured interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis commenced as soon as data began to emerge. The findings show that palliative nursing across cultural boundaries is paradoxical. In endeavouring to treat everyone equally, nurses treated everyone as individuals. They made intense efforts to transcend both cultural and language barriers. The nurses gave of themselves when caring for the patients, but their endeavours were impeded by limited resources and a lack of education. The theory of cross-cultural endeavour in palliative nursing was developed to explain how palliative care nurses care for patients from cultures other than their own.

No abstract

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) programs have been treating individuals with chronic and severe mental illness since the 1970s. While ACT programs were developed to address the treatment needs of severely mentally ill persons traditionally suffering from chronic mental illnesses, ACT programs are seeing a growing number of persons with co-morbid personality disorders. The efficacy of traditional ACT programs in treating individuals with co-occurring personality disorders is uncertain, in particular individuals with co-morbid Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) has been proposed as an effective approach to treating clients with BPD in this setting. The purpose of this paper is to examine the value of DBT for individuals with BPD in ACT programs. The writers discuss the prevalence of Borderline Personality Disorders in ACT populations, briefly review the literature on DBT in ACT, address the feasibility of implementing DBT in an ACT model, examine potential barriers to this implementation, and highlight potential areas for future research.