End Of Life College Essays Samples For Students

Political issues in nursing

Introduction
Healthcare reform is built on the existing health insurance system and aims at providing more people with the coverage of health insurance. It also seeks to establish protection of customers legally and educate them how to buy insurances. The legislation proposed on health reform is intended to change how health care gets delivered, organized and financed. However focus has been put on the responsibility of federal government; impact of loweringMedicare spending growth rate; provision to pay physicians plus other practitioners who are qualified and collection of information about procedures for end of life care. The policy shows ...

Brief Summary of the Case

The case study which was presented both in text and in video was the case of a Martin Cavanagh, a patient diagnosed with COPD or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder, a common respiratory disorder that typically presents with breathing impairments, increased fatigability, and in severe conditions, respiratory failure. Based on the types and volume of information being presented in the video, it can be implied that the film was made both for families of terminally ill patients as well as the different members of a rehabilitation and medical team, to make people from these two groups aware, how crucial the Advanced Care Planning phase ...

Medicine

Pre hospital care – paramedic
This document outlines an analysis of the film “A Good Death” filmed at the Dunedin Hospital New Zealand. It was produced by Dr. Taylor who had a passion for end of life issues in patients with respiratory failure. This story embraced the turmoil of one of his patients, Martin Cavanagh.

Key features of the case

Key features of this case embody preparing to have a good death experience. Mr. Martin Cavanagh’s struggle was not only physical, but emotional. This emotional struggle apparently was transferred to his family who day after day just witnessed his agony. It would appear that after a ...

Abstract

Karen Ann Quinlan is a woman who lived between March 1954 and June 1985. She was born to a single mother of American Irish ancestry. Later, her mom gave her up for adoption to Joseph and Julia Quinlan; a childless couple at the time. (Quinlan, 1978). At age 21 in 1975, however, after moving away from her adopted parents to live with friends; she encountered the unfortunate experience of becoming unconscious, remaining in a coma for almost ten years. From reports she was dieting, had very little to eat within two days of the incident and was taking tonics and valium; besides drinking ...

English

Euthanasia has always been a controversial social issue in the cultures around the world. It is associated with ethical issues as well as social consequences. The term Euthanasia itself means, mercy killing. It is the process of ending someone's life based on that person’s own wish. When a person wants to end his life because he is suffering from a terminal disease or some other weakening condition, Euthanasia is often recommended. In most of the states of the United States, euthanasia is considered illegal. However in many states including California, physician-assisted suicides are legalized based on the requirement ...

Introduction

Detering, Arnold, & Dizon (2014) describe advance directives as the documents, which an individual completes while still having the decisional capacity regarding the way treatment decisions ought to be made on his/her behalf in the event he/she losses this decisional capacity. Thus, advance directives allow an individual clarify his/her decisions regarding end-of-life care in advance. According to Thomas & Lobo (2011), advanced directives failed in achieving their goals, which are giving the ill people and their family more control over their care and ensuring that their wishes regarding the rejection of treatment were recognized, even though they were not capable of ...

End of life alternatives: physician assisted suicide and continue sedation

Introduction
Today, many people are dying in hospitals due to chronic disease which often call for a decision regarding the end of life. Sometimes, these decisions lead to the shortening of life and have often roused immense debate based on ethical implications. “Physician Assisted suicide” (PAS) remains one of the most debated subjects in ethical circles. This is whereby the physician provides a patient, at their own request, with a lethal form of medication which is self-administered by the patient. On the other hand, Continuous Sedation (CS) when used at the end of life takes or reduces the patient’s consciousness ...

No one can clearly articulate the feeling that one experiences at death. While many people have a fear for death, there are many people who have come back from experiences that are close to death. These people who have had near death experiences have told pleasant experiences of life after death. For many people who have experienced these near death phenomenons, they have an unquestionable and steady belief on the presence of life after death (Hoof, p. 132). However, scientists believe that near death experiences are merely hallucinations produced by dying brains that are comparable to vivid dreams. In my ...

Spirituality and End of Life Care

Spiritual care has gained importance in recent years as a pillar in provision of holistic palliative care aimed at alleviating suffering for patients and their family. Spiritual care in the end of life care is not about imposing beliefs and values or converting a terminally ill person but it is about giving hope, strength, meaning, and purpose to the terminally ill person and their family. This paper covers spirituality in end of life care.
Spirituality relates to the beliefs and values a person holds on the meaning of life and may be expressed through association with organized religion or secular ethical ...

Palliative care is a component of compassionate care. It is a dynamic holistic care of people who have got highly developed and progressive diseases. The care involves management of all symptoms and offering of spiritual, psychological and social support to the patients. The aim of this care is common among all the nurses giving it, which is the accomplishment of the highest quality of life for all the patients as well as their families. Many features of the care do not only apply to the late stages of diseases, but also in earlier courses in combination with some treatments (Baldacchino et ...

Is this a quantitative or qualitative research article?

Rome, Luminais, Bourgeois, & Blais (2011) article is based on qualitative research with a particular inclination on review of literature and descriptive statistics to explore the aspect of palliative care within the context of end of life. There is no primary data or any form of experimentation within this study (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2015).

What are the problem and purpose of the research article?

Rome, Luminais, Bourgeois, & Blais (2011) indicate that palliative care is an essential component of the nursing process. For patients in end of life care, there is s tendency for patients to die in suffering and pain especially with the notion that death should be treated as an ...

Personal Ethics

Personal, cultural, and spiritual values contribute to your worldview and philosophy of nursing and their influence on my nursing practice
Nursing provides an opportunity to help other people who are in need or are sick. An individual’s dedication to work mainly depends on their level of passion. A dedicated individual can be committed to providing the best quality service. This then translates to performing duties ethically. Performing duties ethically ensures that the safety and life of a patient is not placed at risk due to negligence or incompetence. Being ethical also implies that duties are performed excellently even ...

- Briefly summarize the key features of the case.
A Good Death delves deep into the condition of a certain individual by the name of Martin Cavanagh who suffered from COPD and was being treated at the Dunedin Hospital in New Zealand.
The documentation of the ailment and the assorted conditions which shrouded the life of this person channelizes the thought of the audience toward the associated trauma and impediments which affect the hapless patient in such cases where the contemporary health care system is not equipped enough to provide respite from the prolonged ailment. The video describes ...

Abstract

The lifespan development study came as a result of Charles Darwin’s aspiration to appreciate the concept of evolution. Stanley Hall published the first study of children; his book pioneered the models and adolescence to scientists (Boyd & Bee, 2006). Lifespan involves the period from conception all through to death. This essay tends to describe the growth and development of human beings during the lifespan period at the same time describing each stage’s attributes consistent with the lifespan perceptions. The various human development domains and periods are acknowledged and modern apprehensions as connected to lifespan development are also identified.

Introduction

...

Objective Data

On April 28, 2016, I cared for a terminally ill patient, S.G., along with a group of nurses. The 84-year-old Caucasian female was admitted for heart failure and failure to thrive. She had a medical history of myocardial infarction, hypertension, and renal insufficiency, had not eaten since two days, and had gained 3 pounds in one week. Although alert to time, S.G. showed decreased consciousness. Her blood pressure was hypotensive (96/56), heart rate was tachycardia (120 beats/minute), and the respiratory rate was tachypnea (24/minute). Physical assessment revealed cold-to-touch lower extremities, crackles over all the lobes, and hypoactive bowel sound ...

The current debate on whether to adopt or reject a law that aims at legalizing physician-assisted death has been met both with positivity and negativity in equal measures. While it is important to respect the decisions of patients in palliative care units, nurses are under an obligation to making sure that the decisions they make concerning this grave matter are supposed to be in line with the reasoning perspective and following the set-out laws and regulations, rather than from emotive and polarized positions. There is the need to take into account different perspectives of the issue at hand with ...

A theory is a set of interrelated propositions that are used in guiding practice or explaining certain phenomena. Theories in the nursing profession play a crucial role in this regard. Theories help in explaining phenomena and organizing knowledge in the nursing practice. Additionally, theories help in predicting, explaining, prescribing and describing some aspects in the nursing profession. Through these roles, the theories provide guidance to the profession and help in improving practice and patient outcomes. This paper thus aims at describing, evaluating and discussing Katherine Kolcaba’s theory of comfort.

Theorists name and background

The theory of comfort is a mid-range theory that ...

Introduction

Kolcaba’s Comfort Theory, which is a middle range theory, is a holistic theory based on patients’ needs (Kristen, & Swanson, 1991). It is a theory on comfort management or palliative care where seriously ill patients and families are given specialized healthcare for them to have improved quality of life (that is, by reducing or eliminating the patients’ pain, anxiety, etc.). Comfort management is a core part of Kolcaba’s theory especially in nursing practice that seeks to ease discomfort, relieve pain, alleviate symptoms and assuage stress in patients with chronic diseases such as cancer. In comfort management, comfort or palliative care may be ...

In regards to ethics, nurses have an obligation to fulfill the principles of beneficence, benevolence and non-maleficence. Not only are we required to do no harm (non-maleficence) but we are required to do good for our patients (beneficence). Yet our code of ethics goes beyond this. We are also required to fulfill the principle of benevolence which means providing aid when we know a patient needs assistance. When nurses help family members prepare documents naming a healthcare proxy or medical directive it can be difficult to do no harm which can occur if we seem to be discouraging of a prohibition of ...

Introduction

Palliative care focus principally on preventing, anticipating, diagnosing and managing symptoms suffered by patients with a life-threatening illness and assisting families create medically significant decisions (Lynn, 2005). The literature discuses the importance of providing age appropriate palliative care and nursing care using a palliative approach for a patient with neurodegenerative disease.

Importance of providing age appropriate care reflecting a palliative approach

Age appropriate palliative care has benefits to the patient and family members of the patient. As people age, they are prone to various chronic health problems (Weissman, 2011). For example, Parkinson's disease, which is the degenerative diseases, is one of the diseases that mostly affect the older population. Therefore, age palliative ...

The story “The End of Life as she knew it” is about a lady, Joan Didion who suffered a devastating peril involving her family on the Christmas day of 2003. Her problems began on that fateful Christmas day when her daughter Quintana who had suffered flulike symptoms was booked to the emergency room at Beth Israel North Hospital in the city of New York. The untimely attack of Pneumonia and septic shock sent her to the intensive care unit and had her booked up to a respirator.
Five days later and before she could even show signs of recovery, Ms Didion’ ...

Analysis of an Ethical Dilemma: Euthanasia and Its Ethical Implications

Analysis of an Ethical Dilemma: Euthanasia and Its Ethical Implications
There has always been debates on euthanasia and the giving of assisted suicide to patients experiencing severe, hopeless cases in their state of health. Euthanasia is said to be applicable in cases wherein the patients experience excruciating, intractable pain and suffering. However, pain has not always been the only thing important when coming to a decision on whether or not the family should apply euthanasia towards a living patient. As it was seen in the case of Terri Schiavo, who was brain-injured and relied mainly on feeding tubes to ...

The administration of proper medication is essential to the treatment of a health complication. As such, medical practitioners need to enforce proper measures in the issuance of medicine to enhance the betterment of patients (Bojesen et al. 375). The purpose of this study is to evaluate the value of medicines through the utilization of a case study. This study will be in line with the code of conduct for Oncologists since the medical practitioner in this scenario deals with cancer patients. Since the maintenance of confidentiality is essential to the success of the medical practice, the practitioners’ and patient’ ...

Introduction

The novel ‘The Book Thief’, by Markus Zusak is an exceptional work of fiction that has a very specific historical context. The novel is based on the experience of a nine years old girl, Liesel, who lives in Germany during the span of World War II. The most brilliant aspect of the novel is that the entire plot of the novel is narrated by death, which uses the life and experiences of Liesel to explain the atrocities and vagaries inflicted upon the people during the war. In terms of the characters in the novel, Liesel is definitely the protagonist ...

The advancements in modern medicine in the last few decades are responsible for new treatment methodologies in treating deadly diseases. However, there are some areas of the human body that still remain a mystery. The human brain is one of the more complex organs and there is no forseeable outcome irrespective of the infirmity. The medical community faces hard choices whenever they encounter a difficult situation involving brain damage. The chances for recovery from a severe brain damage are slim. Hence, during such times, a hospital staff will request the family for consent to withdraw specific medical treatment or ...

This paper will give summary of the main ideas in part III. Thee many facts that are discussed by eth authors are also summarized here. In the book, the chapter talks about this thing. In the chapter, the author argues that the flattening if the world created two billion consumers and not competitors alone. This flattening of the world has made the consumers to demand for more energy. With all these demands, the author argues that there is a need to have additional clean and renewable energy. These additional needs have affected energy and food prices. The environment and global ...

A thesis in support of physician-assisted suicide

- Introduction:

My Thesis for this essay is “The Right to Die.”

The “Right to die” is fundamentally the decision of if a person has the right to choose to die when her/his life could be extended by life support. Through this thesis, I attempt to make an argument for this issue. I believe that a person must have the right to make this choice, legally and ethically. For the purpose of supporting my thesis; I will explain the historical and current system on the topic, the laws regarding euthanasia, real-life examples, and my recommendation why euthanasia should be legalized.
- The History and Present of Physician-Assisted Suicide:
Over ...

The Australian healthcare system is one of the most efficient healthcare systems in the developed world. According to a comparative health study of six nations funded by the commonwealth fund and conducted in 2005, Australia ranked the highest in quality healthcare scoring either the first or the second position in all the indicators used (Davis, 2007). Both the private entities and the national government through the ministry of health provide the Australian healthcare services. The ministry of health oversees the delivery of national health policy through the state governments. The government provides subsidized healthcare services through various initiatives including the ...

Introduction

Through the years, theorists use a variety of theories in attempts to explain human development socially, emotionally, physically and intellectually. Among the most used theories are those of psychosocial development; the main contributor is Erik Erikson. His theory on psychosocial development is one of the most influential personality theories; he focuses on the belief that a human being develops in stages. The occurrences at every stage develop the person’s psychosocial abilities; Erikson explores the influence of social experiences throughout a person’s lifespan (Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields, 2006). The development of ego identity is a significant element in Erikson’s stages; ego identity refers ...

Introduction

Wald, J. & Negulesco, J. (1948). Johnny Belinda. {Motion Picture] United States, Warner Brothers.
The movie that I will discuss about in my essay is entitled, “Jonny Belinda.” The movie director was Jean Negulesco and Jerry Wald produced it. Jonny Belinda was produced in September 14, 1948. The screenplay writers of the movie are Allan Vincent and Irma von cube. The movie is based on a play written by an American, Elmer Harris. The movie is in the category of American drama film .The writer had lived long in Prince Edward Island where he came across the story of a deaf ...

Ethical Issues on being both Professional and Human: One Women’s Journey Paper

Introduction
Awareness has been heightened in the recent past over the need to take account of the patients’ experiences during illness. Their friends and relatives have are also affected during this hard times and have stories of heart break from pain inflicted when they see their ill friends and family. The stories from this people provide a good means for the generation of logical ideas about the medical practice, the effects and experiences in good health and illness, and the issues of morality. Often, they are particularistic and highly dynamic. This is so because the readers are engaged at a ...

One of the most difficult subjects for people to talk about is death. People may joke about it; for example, making outrageous predictions for their own deaths saying things like, “My death will be caused by being eaten by a great white shark!” However, people tend to avoid serious discussions about death with others such as family; people even avoid an introspective self-dialogue about death, neglecting creating documents such as wills and advance directives. When imminent death or a lengthy terminal illness arrive on the horizon, it may come as a surprise even to those who have lived a long and rewarding life. ...

Euthanasia or the Right to Die

We live in an age of medicine filled with technological wonders – and difficulties. Medical technology has given us the power to extend the lives of patients whose physical capacity and mental faculties cannot be restored, whose degenerating state of health cannot be reversed, and whose pain cannot be relieved. This has led us not only to a moral and ethical struggle between proponents of euthanasia, also known as physician-assisted suicide or the right to die, and those who oppose it, but also to a history of legal decisions that have come to determine our rights to liberty – and life itself.

At ...

English Literature

Emily Dickinson’s poem entitled Because I Could Not Stop for Death is a quiet, unassuming and somewhat haunting poem which relies upon personification to present the character of death as a figure with human-like qualities. The poem concerns itself with a description of the speaker’s passage to the afterlife, accompanied by death. As such, the poem has some strangely languid effects in it – the choice of language encourages the reader to perform it in quite a slow, deliberate way whilst the plot is also, effectively, a slow moving procession. Additionally, the poem has a calmness to it – like the surface of a lake on a ...