Nursing Health Care and Philosophy

Question: Discuss about theNursingfor Health Care and Philosophy. Answer: Opinion-Editorial Piece on Preserving Human Dignity During End of Life Care End of life care is an important element of palliative care where a person is diagnosed to be in the last stage of his/her life. People experiencing palliative care are often vulnerable loss of dignity during the process. However, it is the goal of palliative care to preserve the dignity of individual who is going to die. The concept of dying with dignity differs with different people according to their historical, social and cultural background (Guo et al., 2014). Hence nurses caring for patients in end of life care have the responsibility to engage in holistic care by carrying out complete assessment of patients related to their physical, emotional, cultural and spiritual needs. A nurse can be successful in preserving the dignity only when they know what kind of distress may violate patients dignity. A nurse caring for end of life patients may face several challenges in delivery of palliative care. Issues may also arise for patients and their family members. Considering the unique process by which individual person in end of life care may approach death, it is difficult for nurses to adopt appropriate strategies to care for such patients. Patel et al., 2014) revealed that patients sense of dignity is compromised mainly due to medical uncertainty and anxiety developed in the process of dying. Another researcher was of the opinion that terminally ill patients feel they have lost their dignity when they find they have lost their independent in life and are confined to hospital setting (Woo et al., 2006). This feeling also develops due to deterioration of physical health and by emotions like they are burdensome to others. This factor may also negatively affect their desire to continue living in the event of death approaching with the passage of every single moment. Hence, seeing the issues in palliative care, the question that arises is that is it possible to maintain patients dignity in critical nursing care practice. An inclusive palliative culture in the ICU can only conserve dignity of terminally patients. However, ICU is an environment which itself posed risk to dignity of patients and dignity can be maintained only when the care in ICU occurs without pain and exacerbation. It will also mean patients get the comfort level they desire and have the presence of the family members during the process. However this is a very unrealistic expectation that can never be delivered for patient in ICU. Nurses and other health professionals can only intervene to make patients and family members accept the situation and ensure that the best is being done for the patients at particular stage of disease (Molina, 2016). This can be a challenging task for nurses when nurse do not have adequate training in caring for terminally ill patients. Nursing curricula is also at fault as they do not expose nurse to the process of communication or engaging with such patients. Patients dignity is also compromised when nurses are not compensated for their work. According to ethical values of nursing, nurse need to demonstrate altruist attitude to care for terminally ill patients, but this value cannot be maintained in the presence of financial weakness. Hence, resentment due to proper compensation might also impact dignity in end of life care (Mland Eriksen, 2016). Death anxiety among nurses also threatens patients dignity when nurses themselves confront the realities of death while caring for patients. Therefore, younger nurses are often found to drift away from palliative care as they find it be very disturbing for them personally (Peters et al., 2013). I have done my bachelor in nursing and so far in my units I have learnt about many nursing values and standards of nursing practice. I will try to integrate ethical and nursing values to adrres the issues in dealing with terminally ill patients and allowing them to die with dignity and pride. The main ethical values that I would like to integrate into palliative care include the values of autonomy, beneficence, non-malificence, justice and dignity. My major priority will be to effectively communicate with such patients to give them emotional support as well as maintain autonomy of patients. Giving all the information to end of life patients may turn out be difficult for me, however it will be essential for me maintain dignity in practice. I will try to be as compassionate and forgiving with them as far as possible. I will also play special attention to psychosocial care to keep the person in a lively spirit even while confronting death (Larkin, 2013). Reference Guo, Q., Jacelon, C. S. (2014). An integrative review of dignity in end-of-life care.Palliative medicine,28(7), 931-940. Larkin, P. J. (2013). 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How death anxiety impacts nurses caring for patients at the end of life: a review of literature.The open nursing journal,7(1). Woo, J. A., Maytal, G., Stern, T. A. (2006). Clinical challenges to the delivery of end-of-life care.Primary care companion to the journal of clinical psychiatry,8(6), 367.