End Of Life Care Essay

Decent Essays
Khadijeh Hamad
Nursing 393

Writing assignment 5

1.) The three elements that assist healthcare professionals in addressing end of life discussions are critical to a family 's decision making capacity. These include the need for increased education of the healthcare system to better understand the dying process, the communication between family and healthcare staff on the prognosis of their loved ones, and lastly a need for up-to date advance directives.

2.)In this 2008 study, families who had a lost a member in the previous three to eight years were interviewed to recount and record their experiences and emotions. In two years, 19 interviews were performed by three teams of student researchers in four different long term facilities. These researchers asked the families how they comprehended their family member’s death, whether or not the person had an advance directive, and also if they had any suggestions for other families and healthcare workers during a person ends of life care.

3.) Advance
…show more content…
They show families being more satisfied when they have effective ongoing, realistic communications with healthcare providers. There was also a recorded negative response by a family in an instance where there was a lack of communication between facilities during the transition of care. Families and patients were also shown to be more comfortable when the patient’s wishes were clearly stated on paper such as in an advance directive. When asked for suggestions on improving end of life care, family members recommended that similar families talk to their dying loved ones about the use of Advanced Directives, and how much they could have helped with their process. They also recommend having more open channels of communication between families and health care providers throughout the

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    Ethical principles are not laws, but guiding principles about what is good and what is bad, that should direct doctors and other health care professionals in their work and decision making. Issues arising over end-of-life care involving decisions that affect the nature and timing of an individual's death raise difficult ethical conflicts for all concerned and can be a source of discord between health professionals within a team, health professionals and family members, or between different family members. Ethical dilemmas arise when there is a perceived conflicting duty to the patient, such as a conflict between a duty to preserve life and a duty to act in a patient's best interests, or when an ethical principle such as respect for autonomy conflicts with a duty not to…

    • 3174 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Practitioners have identified common roadblocks that arise during end of life care conversations and why these conversations are sometimes frequently avoided. Unfortunately, even with the growing knowledge of barriers to end of life care, the literature reveals that very few physician practices or health care organizations have incorporated additional end of life care training or provided appropriate educational tools to help reduce barriers to end of life care. Future quantitative research is needed to determine the effectiveness of incorporating newly designed end of life care tools into the electronic record to determine if this may help improve timely hospice and palliative care…

    • 1635 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nursing 304 Assignment

    • 1106 Words
    • 5 Pages

    He had his wishes respected, he and his family had support and room to process death, and he went with well-managed symptoms that gave the appearance that he was sleeping when he passed. Unfortunately, I have seen both with my friends and family, as well as patients and families, being deprived of the hospice palliative care services that my grandfather was provided. Although I understand that as a professional I must be mindful of how my opinion might affect a patient’s care, I feel that patients with either life-threatening or life-limiting should be given the opportunity to choose a hospice-palliative care approach. In addition, I hope that I will be able to explore further my knowledge and understanding of hospice palliative care to become a better advocate for patients and continue to improve my nursing practice. Lastly, I believe that my grandfather’s passing marked the start of my life’s journey with death and is one that I will continue to learn and grown on until it is my day to meet him for…

    • 1106 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pediatric Hospice Care

    • 504 Words
    • 3 Pages

    At some point in your career you have or will encounter a pediatric/adolescent patient with a progressive, slow deteriorating disease with no treatment options, or a severe central nervous systems disability, that predisposes them to an unpredictable death. Regardless of the reason, death for pediatric/adolescent patients should be uncomplicated and pleasant. The problems often seen are the inability of health care facilities and health care provider’s to understand and comply with the wishes of these dying patients. Denying those wishes tend to complicates the death experience and imprints a negative experience on the family. According to Donnelly, “there is evidence that dying in a hospital is not always a good experience” (Donnelly & Dickson, 2013, p.732).…

    • 504 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Hello, Tera~~ Good post this week. End-of-life care interventions must report arrangement and strategy alterations, as well as developments in specific nurse's communication expertise regarding end-of-life conversations. The hospice training and development and diffusion of efforts for the general public and experts in palliative care will affect the growth and acceptance of end-of-life conversations. Also continue to participate in the skills and experience to enhance the level of comfort and the opportunity to foster dialogue and end of life, as well as individual experts, it is important for them to work within the organization. These efforts will not only nurses but also the most important for the doctor (Giovanni, 2012).…

    • 181 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Family members do not always have the luxury of being with a dying love one all day everyday. No one truly knows the exact moment death will run it’s course. However, on the occasion that a patient applies for assisted suicide and is accepted, family members are awarded the opportunity to take as long as they please saying their peace and preparing themselves for the event. Included in a death study published by Routledge, they write, “her daughters made an effort to spend time with her, help her organize her affairs, write good-bye letters, and send gifts to lifelong friends……

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    End Of Life Care Analysis

    • 805 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Somewhere around the beginning of March 2003 I lost a close family member of mine due to the improper medical care of some health professionals, such as nurses and doctors. This incident caused me to become interested in the subject of End of Life Care. End of Life Care is “the health care, not only that of a hospitalized patient in their last few days or minutes, but more broadly care of those with a terminal illness or terminal condition that has become advanced, progressive, and incurable”. (“en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-life_care”). In End of Life Care you have to recognize what specific treatments the patient wants.…

    • 805 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Implementation of a tool or guide to ensure the communication of end of life care. Two factors that were identified as main problems are the ability to predict terminal diagnosis per physician and the ability to communicate the plan of care for their end of life. Priorities are that conversations must be patient and or family led, focusing on their goals of care. Training methods suggest asking the staff “What would you do if given the news that you had less than one year to live?…

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Reflection Of Extremis

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages

    This learning opportunity reflection was on based on choose your own adventure category. In this learning opportunity I reviewed a documentary titled “Extremis” on Netflix. This documentary took a close look at patients in the ICU and the decisions surrounding their care when their prognosis is not good. In total I spent about two hours completing my learning opportunity and the reflection assignment. I chose to review this film because the description looked interesting.…

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    One of the pressing ethical issues which the National Medical Ethics Committee addressed was the care and treatment of patients who are incurable and terminally ill. Today, modern medical technology is able to sustain essential physiological functions and technically prolong life in the final stages of terminal illness (Chew, 2002). The care of terminally ill patients requires good physician patient relationships. Communication and teamwork are crucial when includes family.…

    • 201 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The three questions asked were unique named A, B, and C. The questions were, Is there a Legal Right to Die?, Should the government be involve in patients’ End-of-life Decision –making?, and In the Absence of an Advance Directive, who makes Decisions for incapacitated patients?. Among the 9 subjects, in the status of Hospital administrator group interview conducted with one of the On Duty Administrator and Physician, a spiritual leader, a healthcare colleague, and other five of them were…

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Discharge Case Study

    • 47 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Discussed with the patient, his wife and his daughter, palliative care service, palliative treatment options, his medical illnesses and plan. Case reviewed with the patient's nurse Kensington, message left for Dr.Cruz-Amy. Palliative care will continue to follow and will also follow in the outpatient setting when…

    • 47 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Since, nurses have a unique position to monitor the patients. Nurses should create a therapeutic relationship, which the patient feels, safe and comfortable (Legg, 2011). The psychosocial needs of young adults with terminal illness and their families involves in the psychological and social aspect that affects their feelings, beliefs and the way they view their illness. Furthermore, it includes an understanding of the diagnosis, treatment-related side effect, relationship and interpersonal difficulties, self care deficit due to becoming independent of their families, decision-making, education and employment (Barakat, Galtieri, Szalda & Schwartz, 2016). Psychosocial care can deliver through good communication skills, which includes supportive counselling to help young adults and their family to manage medical…

    • 1260 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Focusing on enhancing communication between patients, physicians and families, the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) has looked at different interventions to improve communication for the palliative care and end of life populations; with one being physician orders for life-sustaining treatment program (POLST) (NINR Strategic Plan, 2011) created by Dr. Susan Hickman (POLST, 2016). As noted in the NINR strategic plan, the POLST assists in communicating the patient’s end of life choices to all medical personnel involved in their care (NINR Strategic Plan, 2011). By utilizing a standardized form, the communication of the patient’s end of life choices with other health care providers is clear and concise (NINR Strategic Plan, 2011).…

    • 325 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As kids, we were thought to always tell the truth, a situation that seemed to be black and white. As we grow older, the reality of things becomes more complex. We are challenged in situations where telling the truth is not as easy and we have to consider how the recipient will interpret the information. We learn to outweigh the positive and negative outcomes if we tell the truth. Recipients, such as the patients, have many rights.…

    • 1091 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays