{"title":"She Learned to Measure Love in Milligrams.","authors":"Pramana","doi":"10.1080/15524256.2026.2729067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2026.2729067","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This poem examines caregiving at the intersection of chronic illness, intimacy, and end-of-life uncertainty. Rather than presenting diabetes solely as a medical condition, it traces how care gradually becomes organized through numbers, routines, restrictions, and vigilance. Glucose readings, insulin doses, meals, wounds, and laboratory results function as recurring symbols of a relationship increasingly translated into clinical measurements. Against this numerical order, the poem foregrounds forms of care that remain unrecorded: sleeplessness, fear, touch, memory, and the quiet labor of staying present. The final movement shifts from disease management toward palliative recognition, where comfort and relational dignity become more important than strict control. By contrasting measurable indicators with immeasurable devotion, the poem reflects on caregiver burden, anticipatory grief, and the emotional transformation of a partner into an informal clinical companion. It ultimately asks how love may be reclaimed when treatment can no longer promise recovery.</p>","PeriodicalId":45992,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1-3"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148897968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When Care Was No Longer About Living: Learning to Preserve My Father's Dignity at the End of Life.","authors":"Yulianti","doi":"10.1080/15524256.2026.2729065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2026.2729065","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45992,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1-4"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148897955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mercedes Bern-Klug, Meredith Levine, Thaddeus Pope, Elizabeth Loggers, Hope Wechkin
{"title":"Minimal Comfort Feeding in Advanced Dementia in the U.S.: Social Work Perspectives and Practice Implications.","authors":"Mercedes Bern-Klug, Meredith Levine, Thaddeus Pope, Elizabeth Loggers, Hope Wechkin","doi":"10.1080/15524256.2026.2724835","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2026.2724835","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Some people diagnosed with dementia don't want to live through dementia's advanced stages. This article presents a new practice, Minimal Comfort Feeding, and contrasts it with Medical Aid in Dying (MAID), Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking (VSED), VSED-AD (by advance directive), and Comfort Feeding Only (CFO). Also presented are results from a survey of primarily palliative social workers about their opinions regarding MCF. These social workers report potential benefits and challenges with MCF. Practice implications include the need for organizational protocols, staff education and training, as well as appropriate support for all caregivers involved.</p>","PeriodicalId":45992,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148867194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Last Voice Note Was About Rice.","authors":"Hari Eko Purwanto","doi":"10.1080/15524256.2026.2724838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2026.2724838","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Drawing on personal bereavement, this poem reflects on the loss of a father's voice and the changing meaning of ordinary family communication after death. A brief voice message about buying rice, once heard as a simple everyday reminder, becomes significant only after the recording itself is lost. The poem explores the difference between remembering what someone said and remembering how they said it-the pauses, breath, tone, and familiar sounds that once seemed unremarkable. Through the disappearance of a digital voice message, the poem considers grief, memory, family communication, and the fragile nature of digital traces. It reflects on how ordinary words, often overlooked while someone is alive, may become deeply valued after loss.</p>","PeriodicalId":45992,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1-2"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148857656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"One Line for the Whole Room.","authors":"Ghio Vani Debrian Soares","doi":"10.1080/15524256.2026.2724840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2026.2724840","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This poem is written in the imagined voice of a hospice social worker completing an advance directive at a patient's bedside. It concerns a feature of the instrument rather than a failure of practice: the form provides one line for one proxy, while the deciding it is meant to record is being carried out collectively by the family in the room. The poem declines the vocabulary the form supplies for that mismatch, and it sets against it a second bedside in which the same single line was the only protection a patient had from a family that had already chosen for her. Coercion is shown to run in both directions. Its subject is the practitioner who holds the pen, and who converts eleven people into one name because the chart requires a name by nine.</p>","PeriodicalId":45992,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1-3"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148833138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"We Heard You Mom. We Are Working on It.","authors":"Mercedes Bern-Klug","doi":"10.1080/15524256.2026.2711352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2026.2711352","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45992,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1-6"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148764020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Healing Together: My Cat and Me.","authors":"Rino Andreas","doi":"10.1080/15524256.2026.2712507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2026.2712507","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45992,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1-3"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148686223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The House Calls.","authors":"Muchammad Bayu Tejo Sampurno","doi":"10.1080/15524256.2026.2712505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2026.2712505","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45992,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1-2"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148654754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social Work Support for People Who Wish to Draft an Advance Directive (AD) in Catalonia (Spain).","authors":"Oriol Imbernon Valiente, Aïna Fuster-Casanovas","doi":"10.1080/15524256.2026.2706472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2026.2706472","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Advance Directives have been available in Catalonia since 2000, and medical social workers are responsible for assisting individuals who wish to draft these documents. For this study, the hypothesis was that proactive intervention by medical social workers working with people diagnosed with complex chronic illnesses would increase the number of Advanced Directives. Forty-eight individuals completed the study. The results showed low initial knowledge about Advance Directives but a high level of interest in drafting them once informed. There was high satisfaction with the process and model provided, and with the support provided by the medical social workers. The study confirms that the support provided by medical social workers in drafting Advance Directives was valued by the patients and that proactive involvement facilitates the drafting of the document. Social workers can work with health professionals and administrators to secure a place in this important process.</p>","PeriodicalId":45992,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148550842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Mouth of the Directive.","authors":"Zongyu Li","doi":"10.1080/15524256.2026.2696874","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15524256.2026.2696874","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45992,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148377596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}