Palliative care has different goals than curative care, particularly for hospice patients nearing the end of life. It can be difficult to find pharmacological guidance for the conditions and comorbidities encountered in hospice. Enclara Pharmacia’s Palliative Pearls series helps fill the gap. Inspired by real life clinical consultations between hospice clinicians and Enclara pharmacists, these clinical case studies and reviews are provided as a service to the entire hospice community.
You can sign up to receive Palliative Pearls in your inbox each month, plus Clinical Alerts and more. In the meantime, here are the three most popular Palliative Pearls articles of 2022:
Inactive Ingredients in Medications and Adverse Events
Oral medications contain active ingredient(s) and a mixture of inactive ingredients, called excipients. An active ingredient is defined as a product intended to provide the desired pharmaceutical effect, essentially the product’s name (e.g., aspirin is the active ingredient in aspirin). Inactive ingredients are those other than the active ingredient and not intended or expected to produce a biological or therapeutic effect.
Recognizing Delirium in Home Hospice
In this Palliative Pearls Case Study we explore how to screen, prevent and treat symptoms of delirium. Learn how common drugs or their side effects can trigger delirium, as well as both pharmacological and behavioral interventions that can help.
Dementia Medications & Deprescribing: A Revision
This installment of Palliative Pearls revisits a case published in April 2017. We have incorporated guidance from recently published literature along with revisions for your enrichment.
