Palliative Care Essay

Palliative care Essay

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Palliative care Essay

Palliative care is the approach that deals with the care of a patient with active, advanced and progressive disease to improve their quality of life. This approach of care can be given to the patient at any stage of the disease from diagnosis to the terminal stage of disease progression, to provide pain relief, and integrate support for the patient and for his family to cope with the disease. For the patients of the COPD, it becomes difficult to live life, due to extreme shortness of breath that results in other medical conditions such as cough, lack of energy, depression, chronic pain, swelling in legs and feet. Nurses can help the patients using a palliative approach to apply nursing strategies to relief the patients of COPD.

Various palliative approaches deal with the various aspects of the patient’s life to help him cope with the disease, from disease management, physical, psychological, social, spiritual, practical, loss to the end of life care. For helping the patients of COPD, physical palliative domain and psychological palliative domain can be incorporated to help the patient(Bourbeau, Nault and Dang-T, 2019).

Nursing interventions to deal with the COPD emotional symptoms is really important as such patients find it really difficult to manage their social and home life. In Mrs. Brown the symptoms are on exacerbation that can be an exhausting experience for the patient, as it effects the mobility of the patient, his sleep patterns and his social interactions. It limits the patient’s ability to meet, interact and live the normal life. It is not just physically but mentally exhausting for the patient to depend on friends and family members for the simplest life needs. Palliative care approach requires the nurse to support the patient not just physically but emotionally, that involves enhancing the communication with the patients(National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, 2019). Isolation from the societal situations and not having anyone to discuss the feelings regarding disease and pain, is a common problem in families with patients of COPD. Mrs. Brown is also diagnosed with depression which suggests that suffering from COPD is tough on him. Increasing social interaction for the COPD patient is really essential, as it can help him get out of his depression. According to study 53% of the patients under palliative care suffer from the psychological stress due to various factors due to illness includes social, problems, depression, Feeling dependent on others for the communication is really difficult for patients, in order to facilitate the patients palliative services also offer palliative care social services, in which nurses or workers help the patients build their social interactions. Communication between the family and patient gets effected due to the increased tension regarding the illness and other social factors, like income, finances, insurances etc. In social palliative care all social aspects of the patients are taken care of by the services. The nurse will use different strategies to help patients manage stress. As holistic providers nurses can help patients manage stress and depression by messaging their legs to help them get relive from swelling. They are qualified to give oxygen therapy to patients that is an effective therapy in managing stress.

These nurses are qualified in observing the patient’s symptoms and figuring out the causes behind the stressors. Causes of the problems can be resolved by initiating the conversation with the patient and his family. This patient-care model revolves around a patient's well-being. The patient needs to get encourages to verbalize his feeling on an open platform. As it is best to vent out feelings and emotions. Initiating communication allows the patient to fid solution to his problems and it is one step towards adopting the social attitude, that often gets lost y patients in their pain and illness. The patient also needs to get encouraged to meet her peers and family members in the home setting, as she can't go out due to her immobility. The wheelchair is another option, that can increase mobility in the life of COPD patient as it will give them a chance to go out and interact in a social setting. These social interactions make the patient feel in control of their life, which results in helping them relive their stress and depression.

Relieving patient from the social and psychological can never be enough if the patient is in physical distress and due to illness. Palliative care for physical distress cannot be compared to hospital care, as all hospitals provide palliative care, but it is given in the terminal stage of the disease. While palliative care can be provided at any stage of the illness. Curative treatment is provided to patients for creating direct disease integrated approach. Patients of COPD suffer from dyspnea, weight loss, isolation, disturbed sleep patterns and pain in legs and joints, which effects their mobility and quality of life. Nursing palliative care can help the patient find relief from the symptoms(Hardin, Meyers and Louie, 2008). Not just that it can help them reduce their hospital visits. Patients of COPD suffer from fatigue due to poo nutrition, which results in weight loss and low body mass index, which effects their ability to perform the daily tasks of life. Hospitalizations also increase in COPD patients due to fatigue, poor management of the illnesses.

Palliative care services are specialized services that not only focus on the medical aspect of the care but also provides moral support to help the patient. Palliative care nurses are in partnership with the pulmonologist and physicians. Palliative care can help Mrs. brown not only reduce their symptoms and severity of the disease, but palliative care can help her minimize her hospital visits. Palliative care doesn't only provide the treatment and support but also helps the patient and its family a guideline the change their lifestyle for better. Incorporating exercise, maintain the air quality in the home, precautionary measures for flu can help the patient live a better independent life. Mrs. Brown can benefit from palliative nursing strategies and improve the quality of their life style. Therapeutic interventions such as bronchodilators, pulmonary rehabilitation, inhaled corticosteroids and reduction surgery for lung volume are effective interventions for COPD patients. Nurses from the palliative services are specialized in the assessment of respiratory status, oxygen therapy, chest drains, insertions for chest drains, pleural aspirations, bronchoscopy and biopsies. The COPD patients often require induced septum through an ultrasonic nebulizer, the palliative respiratory nurses can monitor the symptoms and formulate the new diagnosis for the patient in the comfort of home, on basis of which new interventions can apply on the patient. The palliative team can provide all the support and care to hep Mrs. Brown find relief from her pain, depression and distress ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"BumwaPsA","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(\\uc0\\u8220{}Respiratory clinical guidelines inform ward-based nurses\\uc0\\u8217{} clinical skills and knowledge required for evidence-based care,\\uc0\\u8221{} n.d.)","plainCitation":"(“Respiratory clinical guidelines inform ward-based nurses’ clinical skills and knowledge required for evidence-based care,” n.d.)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1616,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/KZl8ZL3A/items/IXHWQD5C"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/KZl8ZL3A/items/IXHWQD5C"],"itemData":{"id":1616,"type":"webpage","title":"Respiratory clinical guidelines inform ward-based nurses’ clinical skills and knowledge required for evidence-based care","URL":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5298145/","accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",3,22]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (“Respiratory clinical guidelines inform ward-based nurses’ clinical skills and knowledge required for evidence-based care,” n.d.).

Palliative care for nursing is an extensive and cohesive approach towards helping patients of the COPD. Hospitalization is not an option for patients in the early stages, and it is also inconvenient for the patient with active illness to visit clinic periodically. Palliative care services provide patient and his family no just the medical support but also the emotional, that they need to change their life styles for better.

References

National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. (2019). Community-Based Palliative Care. [online] Available at: https://www.nhpco.org/resources/community-based-palliative-care [Accessed 8 Apr. 2019].

Respiratory clinical guidelines inform ward-based nurses’ clinical skills and knowledge required for evidence-based care [WWW Document], n.d. URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5298145/ (accessed 4.8.19).

Hardin, K., Meyers, F. and Louie, S. (2008). Integrating Palliative Care in Severe Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease. COPD: Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, 5(4), pp.207-220.

Bourbeau, J., Nault, D. and Dang-T, T. (2019). Self-management and behaviour modification in COPD. [online] 52(3). Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738399103001022 [Accessed 8 Apr. 2019].