A round-up from elsewhere on the web, which may appeal to the Palliverse community. Topics will include palliative care, healthcare and social media and academic research. (Is this something you’d like to see regularly? If so, please comment or do our quick survey.)
Those with an interest in research will enjoy the new @Lego_Academics twitter account. (Hint: you don’t need your own twitter account to view it.) It features the first Lego female scientists. The account has >2500 followers and has only been tweeting for 12 hours!
The Guardian reports that a French hospital is opening a wine bar in its palliative care centre, with the aim of “re-humanising” patients. I’ve heard of a palliative care unit with a drinks trolley – does your service have one?In Toronto, a new program called PEACH (Palliative Education and Care for the Homeless) is providing palliative care to the homeless. This includes medical care, a home and, if requested, helping people to contact long-lost loved ones. Palliative Care and Family Physician Dr Naheed Dosani is interviewed about the program here. Do you know of any similar programs in Australia or New Zealand? (via @JenMarsh2)
Public health academic Dr Lesley Russell outlines the global benefits of social media to public health, including YouTube, Twitter, apps and more. Now I want to play the CDC’s “Solve the Outbreak” app. (via @phcris)
Still on public health, from Ireland, the Public Health Approach to Palliative Care from Public Health and Palliative Care International. (via @KezNoo, who is guest tweeting from the @WePublicHealth account this week to coincide with yesterday’s #DyingtoKnowDay)
I hope you enjoyed our first Palliverse reading list. Please let us know what you think.
palliverse.com 
I love love love the lego academics…. thanks this was great!
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I introduced a drinks trolley at my 30 bed stand alone palliative inpatient unit. The unit was part of a large hospital network (which had a strong drug and alcohol department) so there was an Exchange of Views as to whether it was appropriate to promote alcohol to patients. The argument about the social meaning of “a drink”, quality of life, extra calories, etc won out.
The doctors wrote “one alcoholic drink daily PRN” on the patients’ charts if it was not contraindicated. Our lovely volunteers took the trolley round and the nurses (theoretically LOL) signed it off on the drug chart. It was not that expensive and we funded it from Donations.
The patients and families really liked it.
We were also very happy for patients to bring in their favourite tipple for them to have.
If patients had an alcohol dependancy, we preferred that they kept drinking at minimal levels rather than prohibiting them from drinking at all then managing their withdrawal. However we viewed that as a separate issue from the drinks trolley.
In retrospect it was a lot of work to get it approved by the hospital administration, but it was certainly worth it. If anyone plans to look into this, I would recommend borrowing someone’s existing policy and not rewriting one from scratch.
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“Exchange of Views”! In my first trainee job in an palliative care unit, I was surprised that I didn’t need to chart alcohol on the med chart. It wasn’t supplied by the facility – patients had to bring in their own. I have also seen aged care faciltiies with “cocktail bars” – the focus is certainly on the social aspect rather than the alcohol! (Lots of soft drinks available.)
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