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The importance of palliative care
Topics related to palliative care in older adults
The importance of palliative care
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IS PALLIATIVE CARE NEEDED FOR PERSONS WITH HIV/AIDS?
Previously, HIV was considered a disease associated with young persons. However, in present day, it is recognized as the disease that affects people of all ages. Individual aged 50 and older has many of the same HIV risk factors as a younger individual. There is an increase in the number of patients aged 50 and over who are living with HIV. This increase in the population is due to the increase in life expectancy of people with HIV and new cases in older people. To manage this increasing population a holistic care is needed.
According to World Health Organization (2002) “Palliative care is an approach which improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing life-threatening
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HIV has a unique clinical course as it is infectious and also requires chronic care as the disease advances. Palliative care helps to tackle the problems people with HIV infection face, as palliative care addresses pain and symptom management, emotional, socio-cultural, and spiritual need of the patient and the family members. It also helps to provide nutritional support, financial assistance and manage drug toxicity (Palliative care, 2014). Palliative care focuses on individualized care and the need of the patient family. As there is an increase in of the aging population with HIV/AIDS, the palliative care needs are also …show more content…
Stigma related to HIV and social discrimination associated with the disease halts quality of life of people with HIV/AIDS. Palliative care helps to manage poor social support, financial instability, neglect and so on (Nakawesi et al., 2014). Another need of palliative care is to meet psychological needs of people with HIV/AIDS. HIV infection adds the risk for depression in the aging population with HIV. Stigma and prejudgment add a sense of isolation in older adults. It prevents them from interacting with people or going to public places like community activities, church and so on (Ball, 2014). HIV has adverse effect on the brain, which makes people with HIV susceptible to cognitive impairment like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (Cahill & Valadez, 2013) which increases physical palliative care needs. Psychological needs include counseling to the patient and the family members on ART, support system in the society for HIV/AIDS infected people, and about healthy sexual behavior (Nakawesi et al.,
Gawande’s book is very pertinent to the present day and has by many accounts sparked a national discussion on end-of-life care and how we treat our elderly. With elderly people accounting for a greater proportion of the American populace and as people start living even longer than they do now, end-of-life care will become and remain a major issue faced by doctors, patients, their families, and the healthcare system. Additionally, with our greater focus on improving patient outcomes while getting the most value for our healthcare dollars, end-of-life care is a major area that healthcare systems and hospitals will focus on, as it accounts for a large portion of their budget. As a response to the need to take care of our aging population, hospice care and palliative medicine are some of the newer specialties in the medical field that have been increasing in popularity and more research needs to be focused in these areas to better understand how to improve patient outcomes.
Palliative care is medical or comfort care that reduces the severity of a disease or slows its progress, but does not provide a cure (Dreeben, 2007). Different people have different needs when life is ending. Working with the incurable may sound depressing but death is a certainty and what we do each day for these patients as physical therapist assistants, matters. Providing care effectively and appropriately has a huge impact on the patient, therefore acquiring the ability to comfort and care for a patient at such a critical stage in life, is an amazin...
Thanks in part to the scientific and technological advances of todays’ society, enhanced medicinal treatment options are helping people battle illnesses and diseases and live longer than ever before. Despite these advances, however, many people with life threatening illnesses have needs and concerns that are unidentified and therefore unmet at the end of life, notes Arnold, Artin, Griffith, Person and Graham (2006, p. 62). They further noted that when these needs and concerns remain unmet, due in part to the failure of providers to correctly evaluate these needs, as well as the patients’ reluctance to discuss them (p. 63, as originally noted by Heaven & Maguire, 1997), a patient’s quality of life may be adversely affected. According to Bosma et al. (2010, p. 84), “Many generalist social work skills regarding counseling, family systems, community resources, and psychosocial assessments are relevant to working with patients and families with terminal illness”, thereby placing social workers in the distinctive position of being able to support and assist clients with end of life decisions and care planning needs. In fact, they further noted that at some point, “most social work practitioners will encounter adults, children, and families who are facing progressive life limiting illness, dying, death, or bereavement” (p. 79).
The first journal article is about advance care planning (ACP) in palliative care. This is of interest due to several clinical experiences and the realization that many families either ignore the patient’s request for end of life (EOL) care or who have no idea of how to plan for EOL care. By reading the research and understanding the methods used, this will allow for insight into how to implement palliative care into clinical practice across different sites. The authors of this original research are Jeanine Blackford PhD, RN, senior lecturer at La Trobe University in Australia, and Annette Street PhD, associate dean of research and professor of cancer and palliative care studies. According to Blackford & Street (2011), this research is important as there are many countries that “report a low percentage of people who have completed an advance care plan” (p. 2022), and ACP is needed upon admission to facilities that offer palliative care.
Hospice focuses on end of life care. When patients are facing terminal illness and have an expected life sentence of days to six months or less of life. Care can take place in different milieu including at home, hospice care center, hospital, and skilled nursing facility. Hospice provides patients and family the tool and resources of how to come to the acceptance of death. The goal of care is to help people who are dying have peace, comfort, and dignity. A team of health care providers and volunteers are responsible for providing care. A primary care doctor and a hospice doctor or medical director will patients care. The patient is allowed to decide who their primary doctor will be while receiving hospice care. It may be a primary care physician or a hospice physician. Nurses provide care at home by vising patient at home or in a hospital setting facility. Nurses are responsible for coordination of the hospice care team. Home health aides provide support for daily and routine care ( dressing, bathing, eating and etc). Spiritual counselors, Chaplains, priests, lay ministers or other spiritual counselors can provide spiritual care and guidance for the entire family. Social workers provide counseling and support. They can also provide referrals to other support systems. Pharmacists provide medication oversight and suggestions regarding the most effective
PAD is the most debated moral issue, where the stances taken by various stakeholders are either for or against the issue. Since, Nurses put the patients’ decision first, most nurses advocate for the legalization of the PAD. Despite, Palliative care aims to relieve suffering and improve the quality of living and dying, most patients with a progressive life-threatening illness wish to end their life with some medical help. This desire needs to be respected, for patients deserve the peace of mind and improved quality of life that comes with knowing that a peaceful and dignified PAD will be an available choice, when the suffering becomes intolerable (BCCLA, 2015). In situation where legislation restricts the client to resort to PAD, people find different ways to end their life to eliminate the unbearable suffering, even if that means choosing a violent and risky death. Therefore, it is arguable that if these kind of violent methods are acts of desperation, then why not consider a peaceful method of ending life through medical help? Accepting PAD does not necessarily encourage suicide or
Palliative care is an essential to the creation of a health and wellbeing continuum for Australians living with a chronic illness. It is an approach of care that seeks to improve the life of patients and family experiencing the effects of chronic illness. Palliative care centres on the relief of the symptoms and effects of disease and incorporate the physical, psychological and social dimensions of a person at the end of life. A recent focus for the delivery of palliative care by nurses to Indigenous communities is the consideration that culture can create barriers to the provision of appropriate and beneficial care for the dying or deceased person. This essay explores the palliative nurse caring for Indigenous communities and the need to consider
Palliative care - treatment that helps to comfort patients, while slowing the progress of a disease.
The Public Health Imperative measures the quality of life of an individual during times of severe chronic illness. This health imperative is characterized by: the potential to prevent suffering caused by the illness, major impact, and high burden. In the recent past is has become evident that care for older people, who have potential to become terminally ill, must be focused on. The types of patients may also lose the capability to make some of their most important decisions which include actions made by health professionals that are related to their end of life situation. Luckily actions were made to identify certain priorities pertaining to the public health and end of life issues. These priorities were established by the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors and the Healthy Aging Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These end of life health priorities which address short-term, medium-term and long-term needs are also called advanced care planning. It can be concluded that communication between professionals and among families about the patient can enhance the effectiveness of advanced care planning.
AIDS discrimination is a bit more complex than that against patients with other diseases. Although years of education has decreased the discrimination in the clinical care setting toward patients with AIDS, prejudice stills occurs. Twenty-six percent of patients with AI...
Lynn, J. (2008). Improving care for the end of life: A sourcebook for health care managers and clinicians. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The care of patients at the end of their live should be as humane and respectful to help them cope with the accompanying prognosis of the end of their lives. The reality of this situation is that all too often, the care a patient receives at the end of their life is quite different and generally not performed well. The healthcare system of the United States does not perform well within the scope of providing the patient with by all means a distress and pain free palliative or hospice care plan. To often patients do not have a specific plan implemented on how they wish to have their end of life care carried out for them. End of life decisions are frequently left to the decision of family member's or physicians who may not know what the patient needs are beforehand or is not acting in the patient's best wishes. This places the unenviable task of choosing care for the patient instead of the patient having a carefully written out plan on how to carry out their final days. A strategy that can improve the rate of care that patients receive and improve the healthcare system in general would be to have the patient create a end of life care plan with their primary care physician one to two years prior to when the physician feels that the patient is near the end of their life. This would put the decision making power on the patient and it would improve the quality of care the patient receives when they are at the end of their life. By developing a specific care plan, the patient would be in control of their wishes on how they would like their care to be handled when the time of death nears. We can identify strengths and weakness with this strategy and implement changes to the strategy to improve the overall system of care with...
Palliative care involves the holistic care to maintain and improve the quality of life of the patient and family during hospitalisation until the terminal stage. Palliation of care refers to the multidisciplinary approach of providing comfort and support for the terminally ill patient and family, thus has an important role in maintaining and improving the quality of life of the whole family. Chronic illness such as cancer gives a physiologic and emotional burden for the patient and family. Education and counselling of the possible options as well as treatments for pain and other symptoms that could help alleviate anxiety, suffering and discomfort. Palliative care provides assistance for the family as a channel for communication between the
This essay describes experimental and observational study designs on HIV/AIDS epidemic in the clinical settings. Observational Study Design The observational study employed is non-interventional and open study to assess the health frequency of related outcomes in HIV patients. The study examines the frequency of outcomes of the patients that use Carbohydrate Derived Fulvic Acid product (group A) and the comparative group is patients of HIV that do not use CHD-FA product (Group B) the study will recruit volunteers in group B that will be excluded from the analysis in case they use any form of herbal or complementary medicine during the observation period.
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) first came to light in 1981. There has been a long and arduous global effort on the prevention of HIV/AIDS. HIV is a virus that is spread through body fluids that affect the specific T-cells of the immune system. Without treatment HIV infection leads to AIDS and there is no cure for AIDS. HIV infection can be controlled and the importance of primary pre...