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Palliative care is a specialty that is relatively new but that has evolved steadily over the past few decades. Its goal is providing advanced cancer patients with end of life care. Its rise was because of the public's growing dissatisfaction and concern with how dying patients were being taken care of in the 1960s and the 1970s (Cole, Carlin & Carlson, 2015). At the time, oncologists were mostly concerned with curative interventions and so did not give the necessary attention to end of life care. According to the studies that were done at the time, medical care that was given to the terminally ill was suboptimal or in some cases did not even exist. The father of palliative care, Dave Cicely Saunders, reported having the same experience. She was the founder of St. Christopher's Hospice, based in the United Kingdom. The facility was the first modern hospice (Cole, Carlin & Carlson, 2015). The founding of the hospice was a definitive moment that would shape palliative care all over the world (alMahrezi & AlMandhari, 2016).
There has been tremendous growth of palliative medicine as pertains to needs, concepts and acknowledgement. Discussions about end of life and palliative care have been very productive since the dawn of the millennium (Cole, Carlin & Carlson, 2015). There has been 138% increase in palliative care team in healthcare settings in the new millennium. The specialty has grown tremendously and providers have increasingly embraced it as people with better training and apprentices emerge to provide palliative care. Nonetheless, access to palliative care is still limited due to inequity in distribution of care with most of the facilities being concentrated in richer areas. Those not suffering from cancer still have limited access to palliative care. Globally,...
Just 10% of the need for palliative care is being met (alMahrezi & alMandhari,2006).
The new definition from WHO, unlike the old one, emphasizes the need to provide palliative care early in the life cycle of an illness and not waiting till the later stages. This informed by the need to support patients with chronic diseases that have high symptom burden and so help relieve the weight of the burden on the families. Almost similar to the WHO definition are the definitions given by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) which primarily focus on the caregiver and the patient instead of the disease. NCI's definition goes further to include symptomatic relief the earliest possible and suggests treatment of symptoms resulting from therapeutic measures (AlMahrezi & AlMandari, 2016).
Patient Referral for Palliative Care
Along the course of the disease advancing and the treatment plan, family members and patients get confronted with hardship situations such as great physical distress, unanswered spiritual concerns and poor coping behavior and these challenges can greatly reduce the quality of life of those affected. The approach taken by palliative care takes these issues into consideration and addresses them. Also, the exercise ensures that the transition to hospice care from hospital care is smooth. Studies done in various jurisdictions across the world reveal that patients receiving palliative care intervention plus oncology treatment tend to record a higher quality of life than their counterparts who only receive oncology care (Devi, 2011).
Dealing with the symptoms of…
Bibliography
alMahrezi, A., & AlMandhari, Z. (2016). Palliative Care: Time for Action. Oman Med J., 161 -- 163.
Bhatnagar, S., & Gupta, M. (2015). Future of Palliative Medicine. Indian J. Palliat Care, 95 -- 104.
Bruera E, Hui D. Integrating supportive and palliative care in the trajectory of cancer: Establishing goals and models of care. (2010). J Clin Oncol. 28:4013 -- 7
Cole TR, Carlin NS, Carson RA. (2015). Medical humanities: An introduction. Cambridge University Press. 1 stEdition. New York.
Palliative Nursing FOR END-OF-LIFE CASES Palliative Care Nursing Theories Theories and a Theoretical Framework for Nursing A nursing theory helps structure decisions and practice for the nurse professional (Scribd, 2014). The three major types are the grand theory, the middle-range theory and the nursing practice theory. The use of any of these theories enables the nurse to provide more effective patient care more efficiently. Grand theories deal with the overall nature and goals of
No body of evidence has developed to support these concerns, influential though they have been. It is helpful to recognize that they are not new issues, but have frequently been identified and applied to many groups and individuals. Such concerns have often been associated with traditions of 'protecting' (vulnerable) service users, issues of 'gate keeping' by service providers and paternalistic health and welfare cultures (Brownell, 2006). This is in sharp
Palliative care has gone under a lot of changes as the years have progressed. Just like how general care has been advanced for the sick in areas such as pharmacology and medical engineering, palliative care has also been given much importance. Palliative care has been recognized as a specialty in many countries. There has been evidence that a care outlook that takes note of psychosocial, psychological and spiritual support
Hisory of Palliatve Care Palliative Care Palliative Care Methods Palliative care entails assisting patients get through pain caused by different diseases. The patient may be ailing from any diseases, be it curable or untreatable. Even patient who are sick and almost passing away will need this care. Palliative care has characteristics that differentiate it to hospice care. The key role for palliative care is to help in improving the existence of someone and
It brought continuity to the process of dying, and a way to deal with critical issues in a way everyone could understand. it's holistic because it takes the process of dying, coordinates the patient's care, and brings resolution to things often left unstated. It allows the patient to have a degree of control. And it evaporates some of the high-tech coldness that can come between caregivers and patients." The most
photo novellas to test the creative aptitude of nurses working in oncology and palliative care. Researchers asked how they defined spirituality and were told to select between four to six photographs out of a photo novella they captured from their work in the field to represent these feelings. The participants in the study included five female oncology and palliative nurses, all working within Atlantic Canada. Researchers claim that "these