Quality of Life, Research Critique Essay

The World Health Organisation (2010) defines palliative care as: An approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing problems associated with life threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual. It is also our duty to support John and his wife`s in their decision for John to die at home, Department of health (2008) patients should have a choice over the care they receive and where.

Although nurses have their experience to guide their practice, as the health professional most involved with the client at the end of life, there is a need for review of current assessment tools and management strategies to ensure the care given is evidence based and best practice.

This essay discusses the core principles of long-term conditions and management. Government guidelines and standards are also discussed in relation to how these will impact the care of the patients who are experiencing long term conditions. The reports, guidelines and plans that play an important role in directing the current nursing system today, are discussed with regard to the management of chronic conditions and lastly, palliative care and outcomes from the publication “Together for Health – Delivering End of Life Care” (2013)

This might be one reason why some patients choose conventional treatment instead of choosing a hospice program, there is many other factors that may contribute to this decision such as; financial status. This research will help give nurses a stronger knowledge base of characteristics and advantage of hospice care. In addition, nurses will be able to explain the advantages of Hospice programs to more of their patients, thus, they will be able to educate and encourage more families to choose hospice care. Not only will it help the patient live out a comfortable life it will also help the caregivers with

The present-day misconception of palliative care possibly comes from the circumstance that palliative care was used interchangeably with hospice care until the 1980s. (Clark & Seymour, 1999). Clark and Seymour (1999) extensively write on the beginnings and evolution of palliative care. They describe the progression of palliative care as a whole and explain the movement from palliative starting out as supplemental care to terminal patients to the concept division of palliative and hospice care. They describe the differences in each and explain why palliative is its own concept that differentiates from hospice care. In 2002, the World Health Organization defined palliative care as “an approach” that increases the quality of life of

Nazarko, L. (2014). Quality palliative care for the person with dementia. British Journal of Healthcare Assistants,

There is a need for evidence on palliative care because improving strategies could potentially improve the patients end of life care and could ensure that they die in a dignified

Paulus, (2008) discusses in her thesis that patients with chronic diseases need symptom control and pain management but are often referred to palliative care services too late and do not receive the care and support they need. Late decision making reduces patient autonomy; patients may become too unwell to participate in formulating their plan of care (Al-Qurainy, Collis, & Feuer, 2009). In a study carried out by evaluating the notes of patients that had died it was concluded that physicians did not feel confident giving an end of life diagnosis; this can cause a delay in care (Gibbins, McCoubrie, Alexander, Kinzel, & Forbes, 2009). Palliative care in hospitals would improve the quality of end of life care. Paulus (2008) believes it is an

In this course, we had group critical appraisal paper. Initially, the appraisal explored the use of palliative care among minority groups, but only qualitative research appeared for this topic. Due to limit research articles, so we had group meeting and met with librarian to discuss searching strategy. A decision was made to change the intervention to acupuncture treatment with the comparator being standard opioid medication in the outcome of reducing pain in palliative care patients. This proved to be a more successful topic when searching for relevant research. Based on the highest level of available evidence, three articles were selected from PubMed.

Mor, V., Mukamel, D.B., & Spector, W. D. (2009). The costs of turnover in nursing homes. The Costs of Turnover in Nursing Homes. Retrieved from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/... National Cent

To identify the palliative care needs, the research presented the patients with the Short Form 36 (SF36), using the Hospital and Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire (HADS). The patients and significant others (n=35), were separated for the researcher to conduct an unstructured interview. Following the questionnaire, the multiprofessional clinical team conducted a focus group debate (n=18).

Gilmartin, J. (2003). Day surgery: Patients’ perceptions of a nurse-led preadmission clinic. Journal of Clinical Nursing 13, 243-250.

I have always believed that health cannot be optimized through the treatment of disease only. Rather, health should be addressed on a biological, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual continuum. Palliative care addresses an often-overlooked aspect of the patient experience, which is symptom management of their chronic illnesses. Health care professionals tend to treat acute episodes of

3. Palliative Care Council of South Australia. (1996). Good palliative care project: final report. Retrieved September 4, 2002, from Palliative Care Council of So

The World Health Organization defines quality of life as a person’s perceptions of their position in life in the setting of the culture and value systems in which they live in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns (Krageloh et al., 2011). The WHOQOL-100 was developed by the World Health Organization composed of many different doctors and other healthcare providers in order to develop an assessment that could be used internationally and cross-culturally to measure a person’s overall quality of life and well-being, instead of a specific disease. This assessment led to the development of the WHOQOL-BREF, which is an abbreviated version of the WHOQOL-100 because the WHOQOL-100 is too lengthy for practical use; WHOQOL-BREF includes instructions for administering and scoring the assessment. The purpose of this assessment is to provide quality assessments in healthcare, focus attention on all aspects of health, and produce interventions that increase focus on a patient’s well-being (Harper, 1996). There were three main stages to the development of the WHOQOL assessment. The first stage of development consisted of the establishment of a definition of quality of life and how the assessment would be used internationally. The second stage of development explored the quality of life cross-culturally among different fields to establish relevance to the quality of life assessment. The third stage of