The Development Of Elderly Patients

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

Hospice exists in the hope and belief that, through proper care and the encouragement of a caring and sensitive team, patients and their families may be free to achieve some level of mental and spiritual preparation for death that is comfortable to them. The goal is to help

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

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

The movie “Wit” is a great educational tool for healthcare professionals in terms of dealing with terminally ill patients. It teaches that nurses and medical professionals should always remember that their patients are not a case nor illness nor experiment but rather human beings with souls and pains. Palliative care is one of the most disputed issues of worldwide importance. While bureaucrats in different countries are making laws on the use of palliative drugs, patients with excruciating pains learn how to “take deep breaths and be strong” (Nichols & Brokaw, 2001). That is what nurse Susie Monahan from “Wit” advises her dying patient Vivian Bearing suffering from unbearable pains due to stage IV ovarian cancer after eight painful rounds

According to Allen et al. (2012), “millions of people with chronic illnesses endure unrelieved pain, uncontrolled physical symptoms and unresolved psychosocial or spiritual problems.” This issue occurs because palliative care is often considered a form of end-of-life care. Palliative care is a treatment that can be used for patients who suffer from chronic illnesses and diseases while receiving curative treatment. (Horowitz, Grambling & Quill, 2014) purposely states the misconceptions of palliative care and advocated for seriously ill patients that education must bring under control the misconceptions. Some patients do not receive appropriate symptom management because the palliative care treatment needed is often confused with end-of-life care. However, end-of-life care attempts to relieve pain and suffering when a disease is no longer responsive to curative treatment. Pain and suffering could ultimately be controlled or even eliminated through the proper utilization of palliative care. Patients who are not referred to palliative care in a timely manner is more likely to have poor quality of life, uncontrolled symptom management and increased amounts of visits to the emergency room during the disease process. Patients with life limiting illnesses bear the burden of increased discomfort and increased suffering. Nurses experience clinical practice issues and difficulties in the clinical setting during the delivery of comfort and symptom management. These issues

Despite significant advances in the multidisciplinary approach of palliative care and the growing body of evidence-based practice, a multitude of variables continue to interfere with excellence in end-of-life care for everyone (Anonymous, 2007). Because of this the primary nurse must be diligent in administering the proper medications to allow the patient to have minimal pain or suffering and provide emotional support and reassurance to family members, and possibly fellow staff members

In nursing, the goal of care is usually to restore the patient back to the highest level of health possible. In some cases, however, the goals of care change when a curative approach is no longer appropriate. The new goals of care could simply be palliation and pain control rather than a restoration back to full health. This type of care is called palliative care. Palliative care is not the same as end-of-life care, but the two go hand-in-hand at times. The goal of end-of-life care is a “good” death, good being defined by the patient. Palliation is part of that “good” death. Both palliative care and end-of-life

A woman is thrashing in bed and crying from the pain her illness is causing her to feel. Her family rushes to find a nurse nearby to administer pain relieving medication. A nurse comes by to give palliative care to the woman that’s in agony. However, the strongest medication that’s at hand cannot relieve the pain without overdosing the patient. The terminally ill patient now has to live with intractable pain for the remaining days of her life. Physician Assisted Death is sometimes necessary in case state-of-the-art palliative care no longer works on the cancer patient. Terminal patients should have the option to control the circumstances surrounding their inevitable deaths with Physician Assisted Death to treat the pain.

When a terminally ill patient reaches the end of their life, many of them receive hospice care. Hospice can not guarantee how effective they will be in making that patient comfortable or how they will be able to function. The effectiveness varies from extremely effective care to very ineffective care. With such a wide range of effectiveness, patients begin to become concerned about how they will die. Many people find comfort in taking their own life before the drugs do (Sandburn 50). In Oregon, almost one hundred percent of the patients that requested the life-ending medication were receiving hospice care (Goodale, Grossman, and Grundy 16). Hospice was created with its main goal to comfort patients. Recent statistics show the real comfort has been found in the patient's right-to-die by physician assisted

Dr. Ira Byock’s latest book, The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to transform Care Through the End of Life, is a remarkable book written from a personal perspective as one of the foremost palliative-care physicians in the country. Dr. Byock shares stories of his experience with patients in his clinical experience to illustrate how end-of-life care affects each person. He explains what palliative care really is and how to make humane choices in a world obsessed with conquering death. Byock presents an agenda for end-of-life care that stresses compassion, dignity, and each patient being viewed as a unique case with the opportunity to partake in shared decisions amongst a team of professionals and family members. Dr. Byock is an advocate of dying well in a society marked by a fear of death; his highly personal account provides thought-provoking vignettes of how people struggle to make the right decisions in the winter of their lives. Byock urges society to embrace the reality of death and transform the medical community into an environment that will allow patients to live the last of their days in comfort with dignity and peace. This book is a vitally important piece of literature for everyone to devour with fervor. Everyone needs to understand the inevitability of death and the environment end-of-life care can present in what will be the final moments of life.

The aim of the hospice nurse is to make our end-of-life patients as comfortable as possible and to alleviate their pain. Unfortunately, however, pain control is very poorly addressed. The purpose of our meeting is to conduct a focus group that will brainstorm on a quality improvement plan, and a way to develop and evaluate the elements of a program that will more effectively address the issue of pain control. This program will be conducted within the format of the five P model: (1) Purpose (the purpose of the project will be focused on), (2) Patients (the discussion will be patient-oriented), (3) Professionals (professionals will be involved), (4) Processes (there will be an organized process) and, (5) Patterns (discussion will be on detected patterns).

Many nurses are regularly confronted with the hopelessness and exhaustion of patients and their families making it difficult for them to find balance between the preservation of life and the enablement of a dignified death. Nurses must acknowledge their own feelings of sorrow, fear, dismay and helplessness and recognize the impact of these emotions in clinical decision making. These distressing pressures may cause a nurse to contemplate intentionally assist in ending a patient's life as a humane and compassionate answer, however; the conventional goals and standards of the nursing profession mitigate against it.

As leaders, it is our duty to educate ourselves and be aware of what the needs for services such as this are within the community. As educators, it is our responsibility to insure that our future nurses are fully prepared to deliver expertise care. As nurses, we have a duty to advocate for our patients and provide the best care possible in any situation, even at the end of life. According to an article by Meier (2011), evidence discloses that those with serious illness or multiple chronic illnesses receive inadequate care when it comes to quality care at the end of life.

I believe that comfort care should be a “substantive need in all aspects of life” as the author proposes. It is important that all patients are kept comfortable regardless of what they are being treating for. A patient that is kept comfortable is more likely to recover faster and have more motivation to get better and participate in their plan of care. Why should comfort care only be important to the patient’s who are end of life, when all patients can benefit from being kept comfortable. Being kept comfortable is a state of mind that is at ease, and the overall patient is relaxed and pain free. All patients regardless of their illness should not have to suffer from any source of discomfort. Comfort care is often associated with the end of