Welcome/FAQ

We are glad you found us and hope you enjoy the information and commentary we provide. If you are here we presume you have a basic understanding of the field of hospice and palliative medicine, and are likely part of the professional field. (Here is a good description of palliative medicine).

Pallimed: Case Conferences is a companion blog to Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog. Some readers have asked that Pallimed include cases for discussion of difficult and interesting situations in palliative medicine. We agree this is an important way to learn and decided to include it as a separate blog since it might appeal to a particular subset of readers. The cases presented have been reformatted with permission from David Barnard, JD, PhD from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Institute to Enhance Palliative Care.

Our target audience is the professionals (MD, DO, RN, LPN, LVN, Home Health Aide, ARNP, SW, Chaplain, Administrators, PT, OT, Speech, Pharmacy, etc.) working in hospice & palliative medicine, but we welcome all readers to this blog, including patients, families and other medical professionals outside of this field.

Our goal is to review current palliative medicine, hospice, end-of-life research with a particular focus on publications not from the major palliative care journals. We also highlight important events in end-of-life care from the news media and entertainment arenas. Pallimed: Case Conferences is not intended to replace the patient-physician relationship.

Drew Rosielle, MD
Pallimed Editor-in-Chief

Christian Sinclair, MD
Pallimed: Case Conference Section Editor
Click here if you want to know more about us.

and

Please email Drew or Christian to give us general feedback on the site.


We do this in our spare time, for fun and for the pursuit of knowledge and truth (sounds noble!). We have a standard disclaimer that the views we express here do not represent the views of our employers or former employers or institutions that we are affiliated with. Please see the disclaimer and copyright information at the very bottom of our homepage. Our effort here is not to provoke but to inform and have open conversation about some potentially thorny issues. Our clinical care is enhanced by being able to comprehend as much information in our field as possible, which is part of the reason we do this blog. We use our real names and not pseudonyms, because we feel it imparts credibility and responsibility for our words.


So what is the big deal about these blogs I hear so much about? If you are new to blogs the first thing to do is 'bookmark'/'add to favorites' this site in your browser (Ctrl+D in most browsers). You can even add the bookmark to your toolbars in your browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer) so that you can access Pallimed: Case Conferences with one click. This is a great start, but the main problem is you have to actively seek the site to get the information. Wouldn't it be nice if the information just came to you?

To get the information to come to you we have a two different options to subscribe to Pallimed: Case Conferences:

1) Email

Using a service called 'Feedblitz', Pallimed: Case Conferences can provide you with posts as they are written directly to your email box. Just type in your email and click the button and you are done. No signing up for a new account or anything. Give this a try and if it does not work for you then just unsubscribe.

2) RSS/Atom Feeds

If you are a little more tech savvy you can make use of the RSS/Atom feature present on most blogs or news sites. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom are very similar. You may be familiar with the orange button on many sites that looks like this:




or the icon that looks like this:


Here is a very helpful 3 minute video to explain RSS.

Click To Play

Basically RSS and Atom are computer languages for universal formating of information. It can be read using a RSS/Atom Reader. Many readers exist as separate programs or add-ons to your browser, but you can use Firefox 2.0, Safari or Internet Explorer 7 to do the same thing (links go to those sites tutorials). Those of you on IE6 need to upgrade to IE7 to get the RSS benefit.

Ours is located in the right column and is supported via Feedburner. If you click on this link it will take you to their site to pick your feed options.

Christian recommends Google Reader (especially if you have a Gmail account). It is very intuitive as are most other RSS readers. If all this talk scares you, it really is not that bad, just try it. You will not break your computer.

3) The cases

The cases are graciously shared from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Institute to Enhance Palliative Care. David Barnard, JD, PhD and Bob Arnold, MD have agreed to reformat the IEPC's monthly cases series to open a wider discussion on Pallimed: Case Conferences.

4) Navigating Pallimed

We have a search bar located at the very upper left of the screen in the Blogger Toolbar.

Each post/case is labeled by common topics we cover here at Pallimed so you can quickly find other similar posts. On the left hand column you will also find a list of labels and the number of posts) Click on a link and see what you find! Many older posts do not yet have labels. These labels do not translate to posts on other Pallimed blogs (Pallimed or Pallimed Arts & Humanitites)

Also in the left hand column is a feature from Google reader that allows us to share Hospice & Palliative Medicine related stories that come across our desk, but are not so interesting that we feel compelled to write about it.

In the right hand column we also have a link to the Pallimed Archives (where you can browse blog posts by date).


5) Comments

Pallimed has a comment function (at the bottom of each post) that allows you to comment on each post. Just click on the "comments" link at the end of each post (the link usually tells you how many comments have been left so it says, e.g., "0 Comments" or "1 Comment"). Tell us your opinions and thoughts. This can be a great community for discussion. You can even add comments anonymously, especially if you want to say something controversial. Even something as pithy as 'great post' or 'what are you talking about?' helps us to keep working at the blog day in and day out for you.

We ask that you refrain from providing specific details about your own cases because of HIPAA restrictions. We strongly encourage you to change any minor details or talk about issues in the case in broader terms. We strongly encourage no discussion of exact prescribing information or giving or soliciting medical advice on Pallimed: Case Conferences. If you are not sure what you should write, please choose something more conservative.

The comment function has a simple verification system to prevent spammers from clogging the site.

You can find recent comments in the right hand sidebar.

Comment Disclaimer: Pallimed reserves the right to remove any comments we deem offensive/hateful, mean-spirited, commercial, or in any other way inappropriate. Please see the site disclaimer for more details.

6) What Can You Do For Pallimed: Case Conferences?

Read the posts, make a few comments, tell others about it. This site is free. No memberships necessary. No Advertisements. Thanks for reading!

7) Confidentiality/Privacy

Feel free to email us directly at our emails listed above. Subscribers (via RSS or email) are kept private and the information will not be distributed or accessible to anyone but Drew or Christian. Website stats for visitors are tracked by Google Analytics, but no identifiable information is kept which could identify a user. Pallimed uses 'cookies' to track returning visitors, but again this data will not identify a individual user, nor is it kept over time.