Essays on Palliative Care

End-of-life care refers to the provision of care to patients with incurable terminal illnesses and patients who are in a permanent vegetative state, and that type of care is one of the most commonly debated ethical issues in contemporary health care for two reasons. First, because of the development and advancement of medical techniques and technologies, physicians and nurses are now able to prolong the patients’ lives, but those interventions do not always improve the patients’ quality of life or maintain their human dignity (Cherry & Jacob, 2016). Second, the human population is aging, so the prevalence of terminal illnesses ...

End of life or palliative care is complex, demanding, and comprises of various ethical and moral issues for both the patients, provider, and family members. Palliative care may involve 3 ethical principles, i.e. beneficence, autonomy and veracity (Houser 2015).

Describe the ways the subjects were vulnerable.

In the article, the author provides an ethical and moral issue on how Josh, a 11-year old boy was not informed and consented for his lymphoma and palliative care. Josh was vulnerable since his parents decided to not disclose the line of treatment services that would be offered to him (Stringer 2013).

Is there any conflict of interest?

In Josh’s case, there is clear conflict ...

Analgesics and opioids have been widely used for the treatment and management of chronic pain in the healthcare sector. Opioids provide better and faster relief to patients with chronic pain compared to non-opioid analgesics. However, the long-term effects of opioids can be devastating. Cancer patients often require comprehensive treatment with respect to pain management. Opioids is considered as the gold standard for most cancer patients with chronic pain which may relate to improved quality of life and improved patient satisfaction. Opioids have a history for substance abuse and the same appears to be a risk to cancer patients. Based ...

Introduction

Nurses play an integral, challenging, and complex role in the healthcare system. Nurses are considered as the backbone of the complex and diverse system that comprises patients and a multidisciplinary team of experts. Nurses are educated and trained to cater to a large group of patients and often seek continuing education and upgrade their skills and knowledge. It is only through clinical exposure that nurses learn and implement new strategies and techniques. Nurses are known to transform the healthcare system by acting as mediators between the patient population and the medical team (physicians and other allied healthcare members). Through ...

Physician-assisted suicide is a highly controversial topic which tends to polarize people’s views. Around the world, there is much debate in governments about laws regulating physician-assisted suicide, and several countries now allow the practice. There are many strong arguments on both side of the debate and taking all of these arguments into account is helpful when assessing the topic. Against this type of euthanasia, the slippery slope argument asserts that legalizing assisted suicide could lead to desensitization around killing, which could in turn lead to involuntary euthanasia being legalized. Perhaps the most important to a physician, the medical ...

Introduction

This scholarly paper identifies the advantages of pursuing a post graduation degree in advanced practice nursing through systematic exploration of evidence – based research literature. Healthcare facilities affected with an acute shortage of nursing professionals and resultantly the existing nurses remain overburdened with additional work responsibilities. Due to the limited scope of clinical practice of the nursing workforce, the autonomous administration of healthcare interventions in complex medical emergencies proves to be a biggest challenge that leads to the deterioration of psychosocial as well as physiological conditions of the affected patients. Therefore, skills enhancement of registered nurses is the need of ...

Importance of Nursing Theory

Introduction Nursing, in general, refers to the nurturing and caring for a sick person. But over the years, such duties are institutionalized and carried out in a professional and scientific manner. Today, nursing has become a specific profession. Nurses are formally educated in their field and trained in the science and art of nursing, which have been developed over the years of study and research. Although, one does not need to have a background in the nursing profession in order to perform such task, caring and nurturing becomes more effective for those who are knowledgeable and experienced in nursing. ...

Introduction

One of the key issues affecting the nursing profession today relates to the idea of providing patients suffering from terminals illnesses with an opportunity of having to die with the dignity that they deserve. That creates the need for having to come up with a legislation that would help in the legalization of euthanasia. Euthanasia refers to the process in which a health care professional assists his or her patient to die within the confines of the set legal policies and code of conduct in the nursing profession (Lavoie, Godin, Vézina-Im, Blondeau, Martineau, & Roy, 2016). However, one of ...

In this case, there are serious ethical issues pertaining to the withdrawal of life support. The first ethical issue pertaining to this case is based on the fact that medical practitioners have a calling to sustain the health and life of patients, but this case calls for a decision that goes against these duties. The second ethical issue is that the decision to refuse medical intervention (in this case life support) and effectively end an individual’s life should rest with the individual and not anybody else. In this case, the patient has delegated the right to make this ...

Literature review

Kaasa, S. (2015). Is Cancer Pain Control Improved by a Simple WHO Pain Analgesic Ladder Approach Combined With Tumor-Directed Treatment?.Journal of Clinical Oncology, JCO647537.

Article summary

This article takes into consideration the role that the WHO analgesic ladder plays in addressing cancer pain in palliative care patients. The authors identify that cancer pain occurs in 90% of cancer patients but only half them are under proper pain management. To this effect, therefore, there is the need for applying opioids under the WHO ladder guidelines as a way of addressing cancer pain in oncology care patients.

This is a narrative qualitative research ...

Abstract:

The healthcare industry in these countries identify nurses as one of the groups with the largest number of healthcare professionals. This proves that their roles are one of the most important when executing euthanasia, as proven in many studies that identify nurses as directly involved in the processing of euthanasia. This however, raises questions about the nurses’ attitudes and opinions towards practicing euthanasia. There is a need to question their opinions and beliefs regarding euthanasia and their role in the administering of lethal drugs. If they are not confident with what they do, they may experience fear, which may ...

2016

Introduction The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the barriers to effective pain management in palliative care nursing. The essay will be divided into five parts the first section will be the introduction. The second section will be the research methodology and the critical appraise of literature followed by a section discussing the emerging themes from literature. Recommendations of how to overcome the barriers that may hinder effective pain management in palliative care will be analyzed in the fourth section and the last part will be the implication of future nursing practice and conclusion of the dissertation. This ...

Contextual factors that can influence the transformational change project (TPC)

When entrepreneurs attempt to start any business, they have to consider several external factors that can affect the business. Similarly, when organizations take any transformational change project into consideration, they need to determine the factors that can influence the project. Political, social, economic, environmental, legal, company resources and competition in the industry the business is going to transformed are the factors that send significant impact over the transformational change project. Hence the aim of this project is to analyze the impact of these contextual factors on the TCP (transformational change project).

Analysis of contextual factors

Mandates and Regulations: Mandates refer to the codes, ...

A matter of ongoing ethical concern for nurses, doctors and other medical professionals is the need for clear guidelines when it comes to the decision to suggest that a patient or family consider filling out a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order. These kinds of advanced healthcare directives are becoming ever more common as our population ages. While it has been widely accepted that medical professionals should respect legally implemented end-of-life treatment preferences for those patients whose lives are drawing to a close for those who suffer a sudden and nonrecoverable illness, the technical and practical aspects of how these ...

Final Project Package

Executive Summary The project in question is dubbed the Palliative Care Program. The Palliate Care Program will run concurrently with other operation of the hospital. The aim of the program is to alleviate the pain of the patients in palliative care.

Summary overview of project description

The Project will be called The Palliative Care program. This program will ensure quality, nurturing care is given to all patients and that the employees will be trained to do so. This project will ensure that patients do not suffer even when they are sure of dying. The implementation of the program will require in-depth research on palliative ...

The term public health nurse, as was originally intended was to treat social, and economic challenges, not just taking care of the sick individuals. It started in the mid-18th century in England, where Florence Nightingale gave knowledge to the first nurses in the district nursing model. Together with her classmate, Henry Street Settlement House was developed, New York City. Regardless of the social assertions that the poor were responsible for their social status, Wald often emphasized the dignity of a person of even the poorest in the society. Also, it is through her that in 1895, she and her ...

Pain Management in Hospice Care

Pain is one of the sources of discomfort for the patients admitted in hospice care. Motivated by the need to rectify the paucity of information on the characteristics of pain for the patients who have other terminal diseases other than cancer, Romem et al., (2015) performed a retrospective study in which they wanted to compared the characteristics of pain for those patients admitted for dementia treatment and those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) with those admitted for cancer. Romem et al., (2015) found that there was a high prevalence of pain as a source of discomfort for patients ...

Introduction

Individuals have many significant views about human life. There are some circumstances that a person love his life, but may choose to end it for some unwanted medical reason. Some individuals may be in a situation that requires an important decision to end someone else’s life, such as a doctor who was requested to end the patient’s life through assisted suicide. In some cases, a family member may need to decide whether or not to continue his relative’s suffering through continuous medication or to end the physical pain by discontinuing the treatment especially during terminal cases. ...

Thesis statement: It is highly beneficial for a hospital with an Oncology department to institute palliative care since the project will help patients and will make the families feel that the hospital cares and thus the hospital can gain from the high patient rating. At the same time, the project is bound to bring in profits to the hospital.

Introduction

The background information of the Palliative Care program project is introduced in detail including its definition, main purpose, benefits, and its goals and objectives. This section also explains how the project is going to improve the services being offered to ...

Do we have a "right to die?"

We do not have a right to die since a right is more of a moral claim. Therefore, death has a claim on us and not vice versa (Gielen, van den Branden, & Broeckaert, 2009). Most people parallel this concept with “right to life” which is totally different.

What is "euthanasia?"

“Euthanasia” is acting knowingly, directly and intentionally to cause the death of another person for example when one gives a physician gives a lethal injection to a patient (Pereira, 2011).

What is "assisted suicide?"

“Assisted suicide” refers to directly, intentionally and knowingly providing means of death to someone else so that the person uses those means ...

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’ ...

1. Define and discuss the roles and responsibilities of an ethics committee in a hospital setting. The ethics committee is a multidisciplinary group that is made up of both hospital staff members and members of the local community. This committee, then, serves several different roles, or has multiple responsibilities, related to their position. The first responsibility of an ethics committee is providing education for the public in the community. In doing so, the committee has to communicate both positive and negative elements of the current healthcare systems, so that the public understands the state of healthcare in their area. ...

Abstract

For a long time, the medical profession has subscribed to many ethical statements that have been developed primarily for patients’ benefits. As members of the medical profession, physicians should always recognize their actual responsibility of the patients, society, self, and other professionals. Adhering to the set principles of professional conduct is essential in acting ethically in the profession. The topic of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is controversial in the American medial context. Physically assisted suicide and euthanasia are often used interchangeably. The ethics of these issues are squarely placed before the public eye. This paper focuses on the ethics surrounding ...

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 ...

Part 1

The realization that illnesses can be cumbersome to contain especially in the event that the patient is approaching the end of their lives is an issue that cannot be understated. In such situations, therefore, there is the need to have in place strategies that will satisfactorily address the problems associated with such life-limiting sickness (Palliative care NSW, 2012). In this direction, therefore, one of the most appropriate ways through which these illnesses can be solved is by employing the palliative care in addressing the problems that such patients and their families may be going through. As such, there is ...

Introduction

Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are a matter of frequent and divisive public debate. On one side of the argument are those who believe that people, especially those with terminal illnesses, should legally be able to determine the time and manner of their death. On the other side of the argument are those who believe that euthanasia is immoral and should never be legally available, even for those who are terminally ill. To get an idea of what doctors think about this subject, Radbruch et al. (2016) reviewed a 2003 EAPC position paper on assisted suicide and wrote 21 statements ...

called and held to account

Introduction

Traditional models of accountability, primarily those of elections and legislative scrutiny, are no longer sufficient in holding governments accountable. While Emy and Hughes (1988) argue that accountability dilemmas have been long standing within ministerial government, they see accountability failures as an indication of mechanisms corrupted by political interest. The rise of new social movements is a strong indication of the collective desire of citizens to interrupt the “chain of accountability”. The desire to influence political decision makers is a reflection of a growing assumption that the democratic deficit facing most western governments requires experiments ...

Introduction

Proper treatment is essential to the recovery of patients. Lack thereof compromises the possibilities of a patient getting better due to the administration of bad medical practices. Palliative care is an efficient procedure commonly utilized at the end of life treatment. It involves the initiatives implemented by a health institution to help improve the patient’s quality of life and the response of their families to an illness that threatens one’s life. This approach is made possible through assessment, prevention, pain treatment, psychological, physical and spiritual discomforts (Bhatnagar & Joshi, 2011). With this in mind, it is worth appreciating ...

Introduction

Information, it is argued, is power. When patients are misinformed about chemotherapy handling, they imagine worst case scenarios; they expect over-blown worst case scenarios. A lot of side-effects are imagined and as a consequence, anxious patients undergo loss of control over their disease-causing psycho-social effects as hopelessness (Sauer & Voss, 2012). Furthermore, acute care nurse practitioner’s role is imperative in the management of psycho-education, imparting skills and cognitive resourcefulness required by patients during the crisis period. The quality of life, which is described as the general well-being with a strong relationship to the patient’s health perceptions and ability ...

Abstract

The twenty first century has witnessed impressive advances in science and medicine, resulting in increased life expectancy. Unfortunately there has also been a dramatic increase in degenerative diseases such as diabetes and cancer. These development have brought the issue of euthanasia to center stage. The following essay attempts a careful examination of the issue, looking at the arguments opponents and supporters have put forward. Among the issues examined is the right to choose how one dies in accordance with the principles of autonomy and beneficence. It is argued that the practice of euthanasia only benefits the very few individuals ...

It is well-known that “assisted suicide and euthanasia have long been contentious issues worldwide» (Barbuzzi 16). Euthanasia is defined as the deliberate, intentional and active termination of the patient’s life in cases when death will benefit this patient (Gregory 397); this method is usually applicable for the patients with incurable diseases and in need of relief of the suffering caused by the disease. Moreover, both passive and active euthanasia methods are possible, though both evoke ethical and moral concerns and trigger debates on the subject of euthanasia legalization. Although physician-assisted suicide and active euthanasia have been legally permitted ...

Research, in as much as it provides information extracted directly from the field, it is performed by human beings who are susceptible to errors or omissions which are sometimes unavoidable. Omissions render the authenticity of the research questionable and thus critiquing (Vance, Talley, Pearce, Christian &Azuero, 2013). This paper will critique a quantitative research paper right from the introduction to the last part where recommendations are given basing on the data garnered.

Problem statement

This research is about nurses’ attitude on controlling pain in patients suffering from refractory problems through palliative sedation. The problem under study as given in the research ...

Having looked at the PAD debate from either side of the argument, and having known what leads terminally ill patients to consider PAD, it is wise to consider whether the choices made by the terminally ill patients are worth the risk of having their lives terminated. By the time many of them are making the decision to have their lives ended, they will have made conscious and informed comparative searches and arrived at the decision to have someone help them end their lives. Many are the times when these patients are put on life- saving medical treatments without which ...

IRB Submission

IRB Training (CITI) completion date:

Funding: Research Information –Details: The management of cancer and chronic illnesses in the early stage is regarded as a key element in enhancing the quality of life in the latter stages of the illness. However, the conventional or norm within the healthcare settings is that the palliative care has been designed for the serious cases and the late stages of cancer. In a majority setting, palliative care is provided within inpatient units meaning that patients in the early stages of their illness and those in preference of home care services with regular visits to ...

Increase in Income as a Poverty Reduction Strategy in Canada

Poverty has been a major barrier in proving healthcare services to the general public in Canada and around the globe. Poverty is known to affect over 1.8 million Canadians due to poor economic conditions and rising mental health issues. Based on recent reports, people in Canada experience economic hardships owing to many situations such as job loss, death in family, divorce etc. The loss of income is associated with poverty and the ability to access basic resources such as employment, education, and housing. The poor health of Canadians is associated with social deprivation linked with material and poverty. Most ...

Introduction

The discussions in this biomedical ethics case study involving the death of a patient named Mr. Paul Mills during his stay at one of the hospitals in Halifax, Nova Scotia will focus on whether Dr. Nancy Morrison’s decision to help end the patent’s suffering by injecting nitroglycerin into the IV line in an unsuccessful attempt to decrease blood pressure and thereby end the patient’s suffering and on a separate instance, injecting potassium chloride a few minutes prior to the patient’s point of expiration. It is important to note that this paper will not focus on ...

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 ...

Research Paper

Research Paper Chronic and terminal illnesses are familiar concepts in the healthcare industry. Different patients have different reactions to diagnoses with chronic and terminal illnesses, which requires the healthcare professionals to be comprehensively prepared to provide relevant care for each patient. Every patient is entitled to an autonomous right, and have the right to choose the type of care that they can accept. Physicians and healthcare professionals are ethically required to honor the rights of the patients while observing dignity and respect of every patient. When a person is diagnosed with terminal illness, he/she can choose to either receive ...

Throughout the history of the world hitherto, monotheistic religions have been the source of numerous discordant debates more so in critical life and death moments regarding patient care. A patient’s religious or personal beliefs remains a hindrance in the provision of healthcare services despite the mercurial rise in scientific research leading to evidence based practice. The existence of different religious beliefs means that the belief systems of patients are equally varied and thus providing certain medical procedures and care to patients is a challenge as Mendes, (2015) opines. Medical practitioners and nursing professionals working with diverse patients having ...

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 ...

Introduction

Palliative care is associated with two major components. The first component is related to the emotional and psychological care of the patient and family members. The second component is based on the identification of pain and utilizing pain relief interventions based on current evidence. Palliative care is mainly provided by healthcare providers with a support from a team of experts trained and experienced in palliative care (Kwon, 2013. p. 910). The main objective of palliative care is relieve the patient from pain and pain symptoms. Palliative care and effective pain management are the cornerstones for a terminally-ill patient. The ...

Clinical problem

The common concept surrounding palliative care is that it is afforded to patients within inpatient care units and hospice care by specialty palliative care nurses. This has meant that palliative care is only confined to those patients within these settings and thus limiting the accessibility of these services for outpatients populations with chronic or caner illnesses. Patients in need of palliative care usually have physical and psychological problems that require early and constant monitoring and intervention which can only be afforded through palliative care (Zimmermann et al., 2014). While these patients do not seek to cure their illnesses, their ...

What are the problem and purpose of the research article?

Yoong et al. (2013) in their research sought to explore the importance of integration palliative care within standard oncologic care for patients with advanced lung cancer. Palliative care has over the years been associated with hospice care and inpatient care while outpatient care has not had a system that can accommodate palliative care for patients with such illnesses. Patients with chronic and sever illnesses have to be incorporated in a system that affords them both curative and palliative care because for them it not just about healing and recovery but also a need to live a quality life even ...

Clinical problem

The common concept surrounding palliative care is that it is afforded to patients within inpatient care units and hospice care by specialty palliative care nurses. This has meant that palliative care is only confined to those patients within these settings and thus limiting the accessibility of these services for outpatients populations with chronic or caner illnesses. Patients in need of palliative care usually have physical and psychological problems that require early and constant monitoring and intervention which can only be afforded through palliative care (Zimmermann et al., 2014). While these patients do not seek to cure their illnesses, their ...

Activity 1: Summary

The paper explores explains the use of a public health approach in promoting advance care to Aboriginal people in regional communities. The study reports that many indigenous Australians encounter high mortality rates compared to non-indigenous Australians. These deaths are related to the prevalence of progressive diseases. The factors that predispose the indigenous Australians to the risk of diseases include remoteness of their location and scanty access to health services (Sincalir et al., 2014). To avert this trend, there is need to offer these indigenous communities quality and affordable healthcare through advance care planning (ACP). This type of care puts ...

End of Life Care

End of Life Care I. End-of-life care defined Since the early periods of our civilization, it has been the duty of health care professionals and health care providers to contribute in the improvement of our society’s way of life. Central in this role is the maintenance and restoration of health with the treatment and prevention of diseases over time. However, the role of health care professionals and providers are not only limited on the exertion of efforts leading towards the restoration of a patient’s health. Nurses, doctors and other allied health professionals are also tasked with the ...

Yoong et al., (2013) in their qualitative article ‘Early palliative care in advanced lung cancer: a qualitative study’ focus on determining the importance and role of early ambulatory palliative care interventions for patients who have been diagnosed with lung cancer. The authors argue that over the last one decade, palliative care has grown in significance and utilization especially for patients with advanced forms of illness as well as their caregivers. This is within the context that palliative care has continually been associated with improved management and control of symptoms, improved quality of life and better moods, effective utilization of ...

Ethical Dilemmas and Its Effects on Patients, Families, and Caregivers

“Palliative care aims to control pain and manage symptoms” (Palliative care, n.d.) for patients with a terminal illness. During the end of an individual’s life, there are a number of ethical dilemmas that may arise. According to the Hospice Foundation of America, most Americans would prefer to die at home rather than in a hospital (Advance directives, n.d.), however most do not. Most often, this is because the patient has not expressed his or her wishes for end-of-life care and does not have a living will and/or healthcare proxy and is unable to communicate his or her wishes ...

Prem, V., Krvannan, H., Kumar, S. P., Karthikbabu, S., Syeed, N., Sisodia, V., & Jaykumar, S. (2012). Study of Nurses’ Knowledge about Palliative Care: A Quantitative Cross-sectional Survey. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477365/ Past studies have always been showing that nurses working in palliative care have got limited knowledge about they are supposed to be do in such settings. As such, this study was done to establish the knowledge levels that nurses working in this unit of healthcare have (Prem et al., 2012). To achieve this objective, the Palliative Care Knowledge Kit (PCKT) was used in the assessment process. Data collection was ...

Pertinent ethical issues characterize care at the EOL. Physicians and other parties face serious ethical challenges in establishing suitable approaches to adopt while caring for patients at this stage. Initially, there is a concern of the Autonomy, especially in decision-making. Palliative care requires the adoption of critical decisions regarding the care to be offered (Hospice Foundation.2016). There is the need for ensuring that each stakeholder’s values and perspectives are considered. Each party is obliged to listen to others when sharing their values, options and questions to cater for each concern accordingly. However, this is the need to examine ...

The Miracle In Front of You Jamie Lynnn Schuster's recent article titled “Miracle In Front Of You” interviews pediatric oncologist and Duke University Professor Raymond Barfield on the intersection of medicine, philosophy and theology and his views on integrating palliative care for children and adults alike. In this interview, Barfield speaks of his personal background, history and underlying philosophy that guides his research and work with pediatric cancer patients. He also speaks on his current medical research which examines immune therapies and quality of life issues for children with terminal illness. He also speaks on how his doctoral work ...

MENTAL HEALTH

The article titled “It’s time to rethink our thinking about mental health problems” by Richard Lakeman presents critical view on contemporary treatment to mental health. New opportunities open for the people, by discovering different biogenetic inventions and technological upheaval, are undoubtedly great accomplishments. However, such issues are to be considered comprehensively, as their influence is not as clear and exclusively beneficial as it may seem at first glance. Talking more specifically, author means that there develops a new, quite hazardous, if applied blindly, method of treating mental disorders – namely, by defining them as brain diseases. Actually, as R. ...

An investigation into whether polypharmacy in hospice and palliative care patient population can be reduced, thereby affecting quality of life

Introduction Polypharmacy simply refers to the use of several medications by patients. Sometime patients are prescribed several medications than what is clinically allowed or a patient may be given too many pills of drugs despite being clinically indicated. In addition, sometimes the drugs given to patients may not be evidence based but their use is only based on the speculations. Polypharmacy has been described to have a lot adverse effect on patients despite the patients being on medication. Instead of improving the quality of life, polypharmacy may sometimes prove to be adverse on patients. Common consequences of polypharmacy include negative ...

Question 1

As a result of reforms in health care encapsulated in the Affordable Care Act, health care exchanges that are state or federally run have been established. The establishment of health care exchanges is bound to alter outpatient treatment as a concept in health care. Some of the benefits that those covered under health insurance enjoy include consultation fees paid to doctors including specialists and payment for examinations and tests requisite to the treatment of illnesses (Carey, 2010).

The implementation of health exchanges has organized the market, making it easier for people to purchase insurance. The ...

Discussion Question One

Patients who are terminally or seriously ill will often prefer hospice and palliative care to being inpatients in hospital wards. Looking at the pros and cons of hospice and palliative care helps vet this option. One of the advantages of hospice and palliative care is that it allows the patients to live the final phase of their life with dignity, purpose, support and grace. When hospice care is provided at the home of the patient, hospice and palliative care enables the patient to spend the final phase of life in a comfortable and familiar environment, in the midst of loved ...

Introduction

The healthcare sector is one of the most vital institutions today. People require access to healthcare services in order to maintain a good health. An effective change design is needed in order to offer quality services to people. Change is essential in any institution because it enables people to have quality access to services in a more convenient way (Fawcett & Garity, 2009). The following paper focuses on change in the health sector through the introduction of compulsory two months palliative care course to all nurses. Implementation of the following program will be achieved using the Rosswurm and Larrabee six step ...

Introduction

Complementary therapies work alongside other treatment method. They are alternative ways of providing emotional, physical and spiritual support; this improves the quality of life and reduces the side effects of medical treatment (Cancer Council, 1). They are sources of relief and comfort for patients undergoing palliative care.

- Meditation and relaxation Relaxation involves engaging in stress-relieving and enjoyable activities. It involves a series of muscle-loosening exercises. Through slow and deep breathing, a person releases muscle tension. Mediation, on the other hand, is a practice focusing on quietening of the mind and breathing techniques. It focuses on the sitting posture, breathing and ...

Evaluation of the Practicum Experience

Practicum experience is a way in which nursing students can appreciate the theory through applying what has been taught in class into a real life situation. It is a period when the student develops practical skills and competencies as a professional. Apart from technical skills, the student can also develop soft skills like problem solving, decision making, interpersonal, leadership, and effective communication capabilities among others.

This paper analyzes and evaluates the practicum experience that was undertaken at the Kaiser Palliative and Hospice Care department. It describes the activities that were carried out and the personal learning objectives that were achieved. I undertook my ...

Introduction

Hospitals are homes to different patients who require different attention. This means that there must be people who are qualified for different roles in the medical field. In this connection, hospitals are not required as a block where all patients are handled in the same room. Instead, departments should be formed where each of them operates in support of the other to ensure patients are handled and treated accordingly. This has resulted to existence of various experts for specific duties in the hospital. Among the most common departments in hospitals are Dermatology, Oncology, Gastroenterology, Pulmonary, Cardiology, Endocrinology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, ...

Since I was a child, I had dreamed to become a successful medical practitioner or someone that works in the hospital or aid institution. But because my parents can’t afford to send me to medical schools, I’ve shifted to a more convenient and close to my passion of care giving. I have managed to finish my nursing assistant short course and had my certificate in no time. I had my first job at a prestigious hospice for cancer, and that was my most memorable all time experience. First day of my work, I was a little nervous and anticipated to future patients ...