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How a Nurse Practitioner Can Provide Effective Care in End of Life Management
Losing a loved one to serious illness can be hard. Nurses as one the largest group of health-care professionals are the ones that spend more time with patients and their families. As such, nurses are vital resources towards the achievement and provision of effective and safe care for the general population. Through expert nursing care, patients and their families can face reduced distress and burden through the unique psychological, social and spiritual need offered by a nurse. It is through such palliative treatment that nurses can optimize the quality of life for seriously ailing patients while establishing special measures that may treat, prevent and anticipate the suffering that ensues upon the family and friends losing the patient. Fundamentally nurses should ensure that end of life care provided to patients is compassionate, sustainable affordable and of the best quality.
The American nurses association (ANA) expresses it position relevant to how nurses should practice their roles, health policies, responsibilities and social concerns impacting patients at the end of their lives as well as the concerns of their families. Through the articulated provisions by the ANA, nurses should provide the right direction towards necessary support to the patients and families in recognizing and adapting to the imminent death of the patient. Even though nurse’s fall under different roles and a different skill set they should attend to seriously ailing patients when mandated with such a task. Through professional training and active involvement in the nursing profession, nurses are obliged to provide compassionate and comprehensive end of life care. Nurses should also collaborate with other professional health practitioners to ensure optimal end of life care management, as well as the much-needed support to the families, is achieved.
Nurses should master the art of effective communication with patients and their families. This an important skill in palliative nurse care. Nurses should have the ability to explain information to patients with clarity on the patient’s disease, progress, plan of care or medication. The information should be in the scope of simplification so as to keep the worries at bay while effectively helping all parties involved in the patient’s health at ease. Compassion is another effective virtue that nurses should have in the management of patients needing palliative care. Compassion on its part helps prevent burnout for the nurses, while compassion towards the patients and their families helps establish a trusting, supportive and trusting relationship more so when the patient symptoms worsen or even as death approaches.
Furthermore, nurses have a responsibility to establish a decision-making process that is a reflection of the patient preferences, psychological realities and what may or not be clinically be accomplished. The end of life management process should have well-established goals that may provide a framework of the care being provided to the patient. This can be achieved by collaborative efforts from the patient’s family and friends, experts in health decision-making process such as palliative care and ethics committees. Even though the current health care system is more oriented towards the provision of care aimed at curing diseases, much needs to be done to change this narrative. More needs to be done in the attainment of a comfortable end of life care system that most people nearing their end would prefer. Healthcare management and administrative bodies should further promote work environments in which nurses can exercise care that meets professional standards which is a key element in the provision of care to patients and post-death care for families. Use of facilities and institutions that support excellent care and professional development can go a long way in the achievement of this and much more so in the line of dignified, excellent and compassionate end life care.
Conclusively, end of life care is vital in the management of a patient, their family or friends wellbeing. Nurses have an ethical obligation in reducing the suffering that a patient end of life process may present to the patient or family. Institutions, nurses as other health care bodies have a mandate in improving the end of life management for the general population. Nurses have a more significant responsibility since they are the ones actively managing the patient’s wellbeing. As such, their contribution towards the comfort, support of the patient and family as well as relief pain the patient suffers is a vital aspect of end of care management.