Psychosocial issues in palliative care - Mari Lloyd-Williams

Caring for patients with a terminal illness requires the skills of many professionals working together as a team. It is the psychosocial issues surrounding patients and their families and carers that cause individual members, and sometimes whole teams, the greatest difficulty.This practical book provides a comprehensive review of the current literature and evidence on the practice and provision of psychosocial support as applied to palliative care patients in order to achieve better practice in the field. The book looks at the nature of services required to provide effective psychosocial care; cultural issues and adaptation; the importance of communication, and socio-economic issues affecting patients with advanced metastatic disease. Information is also included onnon-malignant psychosocial care. Patient drawings, poetry and quotations are used throughout.

This helpful and accessible book will be useful to all members of multi-professional teams caring for patients with specialist palliative care needs... There is an admirable lack of jargon in this book and even quite difficult concepts are explained with clarity... this book represents a useful addition to the ward or community team's bookshelf. Each member of the multi-professional team will find a chapter that is relevant to their everyday practice.
Hospice Information Bulletin

This is an excellent book, to be celebrated not only because of the area it covers but also for the high quality of its contents.
BMJ

Here is a clearly-written, up to date summary of what we know about psychosocial care in the practice of palliative medicine... Reading this book will be of benefit to any and all of the members of the palliative care team.
IAHPC

Lloyd-Williams is to be congratulated for bringing together contributions from so many leaders in the field of psychological, social and spiritual palliative care research. The end result is an eminently readable and well-referenced text... which provides a very comprehensive and up to date overview of the evidence base with very sound and practical suggestions for our clinical practice... This book can be highly recommended as a welcome and clinically important addition tocore palliative care literature.
Palliative Medicine

This book remains a valuable resource for nursing, medical and social work staff and other allied health professionals working with palliative care patients.
Journal of Advanced Nursing