St Luke's And The London Ambulance Service

This author’s personal perceptions concerning patients facing a lingering terminal illness, have been shaped by over 20 years of critical care nursing experience. Facing death and illness on a daily basis requires self-examination and a high degree of comfort with one’s own mortality, limits and values. Constant exposure to the fragility of life forces respect for the whole person and the people who love them. A general approach to patients who are actively dying is to allow them to define what they want and need during this time. The nurse’s role

Death is inevitable. It is one of the only certainties in life. Regardless, people are often uncomfortable discussing death. Nyatanga (2016) posits that the idea of no longer existing increases anxiety and emotional distress in relation to one’s mortality. Because of the difficulty in level of care for end-of-life patients, the patient and the family often need professional assistance for physical and emotional care. Many family caregivers are not professionally trained in medicine, and this is where hospice comes into play. Hospice aims to meet the holistic needs of both the patient and the patient’s family through treatment plans, education, and advocacy. There is a duality of care to the treatment provided by hospice staff in that they do not attempt to separate the patient’s care from the family’s care. Leming and Dickinson (2011) support that hospice, unlike other clinical fields, focuses on the patient and the family together instead of seeing the patient independent of the family. Many times in hospitals, the medical team focuses solely on the goal of returning the patient back to health in order for them to return to their normal lives. They do not take into account the psychological and spiritual components of the patient’s journey and the journey that the family must take as well. For treatment of the patient, Leming and Dickinson agree that hospice does not attempt to cure patients, and instead concentrates solely

The first half of this clinical placement, I was on a palliative ward. While others might find it difficult caring for patients at the end stage of life or in great deal of pain, I find that it gives me a great deal of satisfaction that I was able to provide care for these client in my own unexperienced way of palliative care. Being a patient myself of a very serious illness in the past, the goal of a palliative care team which is to provide quality of life during these difficult stages of the client, hits close to my heart. I might consider working in the palliative care unit in the future.

1.1 Caring for patients at the end of life is a challenging task that requires not only the consideration of the patient as a whole but also an understanding of the family, social, legal, economic, and institutional circumstances that surround patient care.

Caring for patients at the end of life is a challenging task that requires not only the consideration of the individual as a whole but also an understanding of the

A legal requirement of end of life care is that the wishes of the individual, including whether CPR should be attempted, as well as their wishes how they are cared for after death are

The process of deciding when a terminally ill patient should die lies within the patient, family members, and the

Part One: In the documentary "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande talks about the death of patients and how it 's a surprise to a large amount of the patients. He also explains the fear in the medical field, and as a doctor your suppose to help people and cure them, that you 're supposed to give them a better shot and if it later doesn 't go they way you expected,the doctors start to tell themselves what went wrong or what happen everything was going so well. Gawande talks about how he wants to learn more about how to communicate with patients and telling them that they have a certain weeks, days or months left. For example, He talks about one of his patients that he had, her name was Sarah and had stage 4 lung cancer was young and just had a

The importance of end of life issues and decisions are now being discussed at the time of admission to most acute care and long term acute care facilities. More attention is being placed on these specific decisions to ensure that the patient's

Nurses: Assist the patients and families to cope with the end-of-life process such as assessing and

The assessments of the patient in an end of life situation must occur frequently as to detect rapid and/or minimal changes in the patient’s condition. It is also the primary nurse’s role to report any and all changes to the multidisciplinary team, including the family members.

It is important to remember that care of the patient does not end when the patient dies. After the death there is still work to be done in the form of comforting the bereaved family members. It has been reported that some

The good that came out of the situation was that the care plan for the last days of life had been met. The patients and the family's psychological, social and spiritual needs had been addressed, and the patient was comfortable and free from pain (Kemp 1999). The care that was carried out protected the patients' dignity and respected him as a human being, with his family being involved as much as possible with his care.

Usually either patients or families have the legal rights to determine what medical course to take with the patient when it comes to the diagnosis of death, in this case the family's conflict needs be considered. The healthcare staff involved in the patient’s care must communicate with the family members during this difficult time. If the patient is determined to be dead, the family will need support from the health care staff that has been involved in the patients care, all available hospital resources, including medical, nursing, social work, ethics, and pastoral care will be a good resource for the family members. Lawyers will usually advise health care staff to work with the family in the most compassionate way possible, the lawyers should be there to help with any conflict between the family members, and this will also help the organization against any future malpractice suits against the health care staff and organization.

In the management of patients, it is essential ambulance clinicians understand and adhere to the proficiency ethics set out by the Health Care Professions Council (HCPC, 2014). Furthermore, as a student ambulance clinician I now recognise the relevance of possessing non-technical skills as well as an in-depth knowledge of theoretical subjects such as ethics and law, professionalism and abnormal psychology is equally essential for efficient patient care.