Essay on Palliative Care: Providing a Good Death in the Icu

of care and changes in the patient’s condition to revise the course of medical treatment if

Key people could be family, doctors, carers, religious leaders etc. Each may own distinctive role to play in order for the choices and preferences of the individual to be respected and carried out. [ Every person’s end-of-life trajectory is different and needs differ in intensity and quality over time. End-of-life care must adapt to the varying and changing needs of the individual over time and that it cannot be limited to certain settings or services. The provision of good

Though they have helped reduce the pain somewhat, the patient would like to visit other options. This is known as the ____________ in a history of present illness (HPI).

Assist the patent and family, as appropriate, in coming to a consensus regarding the options that best meet the patient’s goal for care.

1) Various needs that would be considered when planning an individuals end of life care;

14. Make sure you are honest with patients about your responsibility to pass on information about potential and

Hospice care is a model of care that focuses on relieving symptoms and supporting patients with a life expectancy of six months or less (Altshuler, 2013). For most nurses, caring for a dying elder (individual aged 65 years and above) is a discrete, time-limited experience that begins with first contact, often in a hospital, emergency room, or long term care facility, and ends with the death itself (Phillips & Reed, 2008).

END-OF-LIFE DECISIONS: I direct that my health care providers and others involved in my care provide, withhold, or withdraw treatment in accordance with the choice I have marked below:

• Coordinate with physician and nursing staff to address the patient’s prognosis, treatment, and care plan.

The purpose of this care plan is to provide a baseline for consistent individualized quality patient care. Additionally, the aim is to facilitate avenues for promoting holistic interventions customized specifically to the individual resident’s needs and goals. Throughout this care plan reference to Mrs. “L” or “the resident” will be made interchangeably.

Advance directives letting family and medical providers know what sort of care your loved one wants at their end of life can make things a lot less stressful when the time comes. Two types of advance directives include the living will and the health care power of attorney. Knowing what your loved one desires also helps you make sound financial decisions well in

The first study is a nationally administered ICU survey regarding end of life care for the critically ill. The study was conducted by Nelson et al. (2006) with the objective of analyzing the views of ICU directors in order to understand the barriers to palliative care in the ICU and possible strategies that could improve end of life care. To best measure and record the views of respondents, close ended questions with a Likert scale rating system of responses were used. These questions encompassed barriers to care related to patient/family factors, clinician factors, and institutional/ICU factors. Additionally, questions were given to assess interventions that could improve end of life care rated from not helpful to very helpful on a 1-3 scale. Prior to survey administration; the researchers verified its quality with pretesting, a clinical sensibility assessment for instrument evaluation, interrater reliability testing to evaluate test-retest reliability, and pilot testing (Nelson et al, 2006). Based on these measures, the survey instrument was modified and items with a weighted Cohen’s k < 0.7 were eliminated from the survey. The survey was then mailed for self-administration to the nurse and physician directors of a random, stratified sample of 600 ICU’s nationally, representing 10% of ICUs in the United States. From this sample of 1205 ICU directors who were mailed surveys at 600 different ICUs, responses were returned from 590 ICU directors (406 nurse directors and 184

Nursing is such a beautiful profession that allows us to be a part of the lives of patients from the beginning all the way to the end. It is a fact that our population is growing older and individuals are living longer. As nurses, today more than ever, we must be educated about end of life, grieving process and how cultural differences affect that process. According with the National Institute of Aging (2012), “End-of-life care is the term used to describe the support and medical care given during the time surrounding death”. The end of life, how people die and how they prefer to die differ from person to person. Thanks, in large part to advances in public health, medicine, and health care, most Americans no longer die suddenly from injury or infection. Instead, we live

To create supportive environment for the patients in order to return for long-term care and recovery.

Any treatment that, in the given circumstances, offers a reasonable hope of benefit and is