Nursing Strategies to Encourage Patient Independence Nurses have a vital role to play in the hospital-based emergency care to home-based hospice care settings. Nurses have evolved from being simple supportive caregivers to having a central role in ensuring optimal care provision for patients. Today's nurses are not only expected to develop critical thinking skills but also to focus on nursing strategies that are designed to promote patient independence, individuality, and dignity as these qualities positively influence patients coping and recovery and minimize their discomfort during the period of their illness. Holistic nursing care includes addressing the emotional needs of the patients as very much a part of the nursing care plan. A brief overview of the nursing strategies that are designed to promote such a holistic care with a discussion of the benefits of such a nursing approach would provide more insight into the topic.

Patient Independence

Nursing role is not just relegated to administering prescribed medications and monitoring vital stats of patients. Nurses also have the duty to keep the patient well informed about the condition and the various treatment plans that are available. In other words, nurses are entrusted with the role of assisting the patients in making well informed decisions. In this way nurses could promote patient independence by making them more participative in the treatment choice. One of the ways to increase patients' independence is to help promote self-management. A recent Swedish study focused on the effectiveness of self administration...

The study focused on 20 rheumatological patients who chose to undergo self administration of anti -- tumor necrosis factor (TNF) therapy. Analysis of the effectiveness of such a self administration modality using interviews identified four different classes of patients namely 1. Struggling (striving to be independent) 2. Learning (learning about new treatment choices) 3. Participating ( who like to be more knowledgeable, well informed and be able to select their therapy) and 4. Independent patients who felt comfortable that they were able to care for themselves without the need for any intervention. Overall, the study reflected that patients strove for independence.
Nurses could help bring about patient independence by being effective communicators, by disseminating information about new and novel treatments that are available. At the individual level, the nurse is also better equipped to help the patient or his immediate family members understand new treatment modalities by assessing their individual understanding abilities and providing suitable forms of information. Nurses could accomplish this by using simple textual material or by using interactive multimedia presentations. [Mark H. Beers, (2006)] This would aid in obtaining informed consent and from the hospital administrators perspective, this type of informed decision making would help reduce legal complications. [Gyomber et.al (2010)]

Also, by educating the family members, nurses could help improve the quality of life for patients with…