Palliative care and the nurse's role
View File(s)
- Author(s)
- Details
-
Toby Bressler, PhD, RN, OCN; Teresa L. Hagan; Jiayun Xu
- Sigma Affiliation
- Epsilon Kappa
Visitor Statistics
Visits vs Downloads
Visitors - World Map
Top Visiting Countries
Country | Visits |
---|
Top Visiting Cities
City | Visits |
---|
Visits (last 6 months)
Downloads (last 6 months)
Popular Works for Bressler, Toby by View
Title | Page Views |
---|
Popular Works for Bressler, Toby by Download
Title | Downloads |
---|
View Citations
Citations
Background: Palliative care refers to interdisciplinary patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and alleviating suffering across the continuum of a patient’s illness. Palliative care is crucial in clinical management and helps patients and families dealing with disease related symptoms and psychological implications. Given their focus on providing patient and family centered healthcare, nurses are often the first to recognize the need for palliative care that is consistent with nursing standards and code of ethics. The nurse’s role as a generalist in palliative care has been growing, and yet has not been fully defined.
Purpose: This review of the literature will discuss from a global perspective the evidence supporting the nurse’s role in palliative care as a strategy to address the needs of patients and their families.
Methods: We searched electronic databases for relevant articles reporting the nurse’s role in palliative care. We searched PubMed, CINAHL, and EBSCO electronic databases for relevant articles reporting the nurse’s role in palliative care. We found 37 articles that fit our search criteria and thoroughly reviewed these manuscripts. From these articles, we extracted the common elements of palliative care in nursing and successful interventions and trainings.
Results: The main areas in which nurses globally implemented palliative care was in their roles as (1) health care leaders, (2) patient and family advocates; and (3) expert communicators with patients, families, and other members of the health care system. Although it is clear that nurses are well positioned to provide palliative care to patients and families, it is unclear what types of resources as the institutional and administrative level are available for nurses to be supported when providing palliative care. While a few nurse-led interventions demonstrated significant outcomes on patients’ quality of life and improved end of life care, the overall lack of clinical trials and evidence-based protocols remains a glaring area of need within nursing research and evidence based care. Nurses provide palliative care across all levels of the health care system, however few studies have systematically tested the results of nurse led palliative care.
Conclusion: To expand the influence nurses have in palliative care, future quality improvement and research projects should consider documenting and examining the impact of palliative care delivered by nurses. There is a paucity in the literature of nurse led palliative care research. Globally, the nurse’s role as a generalist in palliative care has been growing, and yet has not been fully defined.
Target Audience: The target audience is clinical nurses, nurse leaders, administrators, educators and nursing students.
Event Theme: Influencing Global Health Through the Advancement of Nursing Scholarship
Item was accepted for presentation at the 2017 International Nursing Research Congress, but was not presented at the event. Items submitted to a conference/event were evaluated/peer-reviewed at the time of abstract submission to the event. No other peer-review was provided prior to submission to the Henderson Repository.
Type | Poster |
Acquisition | Proxy-submission |
Review Type | Abstract Review Only: Reviewed by Event Host |
Format | Text-based Document |
Evidence Level | N/A |
Research Approach | N/A |
Keywords | Acute, Chronic and Critical Illness; Organizational and Workforce Issues; Palliative and End of Life Care |
Name | 28th International Nursing Research Congress |
Host | Sigma Theta Tau International |
Location | Dublin, Ireland |
Date | 2017 |
All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.
All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.
All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subjects.
-
Depth-of-Field Dissimilarity: Making Sense of Moral Distress Within Cultural Complexity
Bressler, Toby; Smith, Elizabeth; Hanna, Debra R. (2017-06-16)Background: Many studies of moral distress have explored nurses’ experience of caring for patients. Acting ethically in accordance with professional nursing practice and in concert with professional values is the core of ... -
The relationships among self-regulation, cognitive load, decision support, and decision making readiness in surrogate decision makers for the critically ill
Pignatiello, Grant AlanChronic critical illness is expected to impact 600,000 Americans annually by 2020. Often, the chronically critically ill (CCI) experience persistent cognitive impairment. Thus, family members serve as surrogate decision ... -
Factors influencing the self-reported palliative care practices of acute care nurses
Kotula, Keshia; Dingley, Catherine E.Timely referrals and provision of palliative care (PC) are lacking despite robust evidence for enhanced quality and clinical outcomes. This in-progress study examines factors that influence the nature and frequency of ... -
Impact of end-of-life education on nurses' moral distress
Mullen, Jenniffer L.Moral distress is a state of concern or anxiety that occurs when there is a correct action to take but an individual’s ability to take that action is constrained in some way. Nurses, especially those who work in intensive ... -
Baccalaureate nursing education and palliative care
Ferner, Kathryn L.; White, Kenneth R. (2017-10-19)A Palliative Care Competency survey was disseminated to third and fourth year nursing students to evaluate the perceived competency and preparation for providing palliative care. Fifty-seven percent reported satisfaction ...