Of particular interest in this week's issue of Media Watch (copy attached):

Australia

Bolstering general practitioner palliative care: A critical review of support provided by Australian guidelines for life-limiting chronic conditions

HEALTHCARE | Online – 11 December 2020 – General practitioners (GPs) are increasingly expected to provide palliative care (PC) as ageing populations put pressure on specialist services. Some GPs, however, cite barriers to providing this care including prognostication challenges and lack of confidence. PC content within clinical practice guidelines might serve as an opportunistic source of informational support to GPs. This review analysed PC content within Australian guidelines for life-limiting conditions to determine the extent to which it might satisfy GPs’ stated information needs and support them to provide quality end-of-life care. The nine guidelines meeting inclusion criteria were heterogenous in scope and depth of PC domain coverage. The “communication” needs domain was best addressed while patient physical and emotional needs were variably covered. Spiritual, out-of-hours, terminal care and aftercare content was scant. Few guidelines addressed areas GPs are known to find challenging or acknowledged useful decision-support tools. A template covering important domains might reduce content variability across guidelines. Full text: http://bit.ly/2IR9tu5

Sweden

Older persons’ thoughts about death and dying and their experiences of care in end-of-life: A qualitative study

Educating the News Media About Palliative Care

Covering stories about palliative care: 4 tips for journalists