Abstract
Supportive Care in Respiratory Disease is a small but comprehensive text that will be of interest and help to medical and nursing professionals as well as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, pharmacists, dieticians and psychologists working as part of a respiratory medicine multidisciplinary team. It systematically moves from introducing the concepts of supportive care through out the course of chronic respiratory diseases from diagnosis to end-of-life care into the details of the practical implementation of supportive care, highlighting the importance of multidisciplinary holistic care. It reminds us to prioritise quality of life, which is subjective and individual, and therefore is much more difficult to measure than the outcomes such as mortality or length of hospital stay. The chapters on measuring quality of life and health economics could arm the reader with the necessary concepts to start measuring the impact of quality of life interventions and incorporate this into the evaluation of respiratory services.
In the field of lung transplantation, it is essential that that supportive care is provided while waiting for lungs to become available to treat individuals on the transplant waiting list. At Harefield Hospital, the lung transplant team have been proactive in the implementation of supportive care for the people on the waiting list as a normal part of their care rather than waiting until a person is at the end of their life. However, I will be sharing this book with the transplant team to allow us to improve our patient pathways further and to help us to evaluate our interventions, a topic which we have found difficult. This book is not only a practical manual but a guide to setup supportive care services.