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Religious and cultural beliefs that influence peoples end of life care
Cultural influences on end of life
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Throughout the course of our lives we will experience the deterioration of a loved one due to illness or aging. This may cause us to make a choice of how and where we choose our loved one to die. Authors, Carolyn Jaffe and Carol H. Ehrlich, in their book All Kinds of Love, illustrate how the relationships between doctors, patients', family, friends, hospice volunteers, and hospice nurses all play an important role during he patients last days as they try to reach a "good death". In the book's foreword, Rabbi Earl A. Grollman comments on Jaffe's history of nursing experience and states "Her stories bring alive the concerns, the surprises, the victories, the disappointments, the mistakes, the uncertainties, the joys, and the pain that are part of one's dying" (1, p. v). The preface focuses on the type of care Hospice provides for the patient and family, while the section entitled "Hospice is..." provides a detailed definition of hospice.Chapter One demonstrates the sensitivity a hospice nurse must use when dealing with new patients and how the nurse must remain unbiased at all times. Chapter Two reviews the family emotional strains and stresses which can be experienced when a loved one is dying within the home and how different people deal with the change. In Chapter Three we can develop a deeper understanding of an individual's strength and acceptance through the story of Karen, a seven year old who is dying from cancer. The different coping mechanisms expressed by Karen's parents are very contrast dramatically as the needs of survivors vary.Chapter Four highlights patients' need for control and decision making over his or her own life. In Chapter Five, Henrietta, the patient had very little control over her treatment and pain because her husband refused to accept her dying, until Janice (hospice nurse) promised her dignity during death. In Chapter Six, William tries a new method of pain control and his spirits are lifted as he once again has some control in his life as expressed in his statement, "I can't believe the power I have"(1, p.194). Chapter Seven lightly touches upon the death of AIDS patients, and the stigmatism's and rejection they may face, but also exhibits the patients' ability to control their moment of death. The joy which a family can gain when there is an open acceptance of a loved ones death is visible in Chapter Eight as John's f... ... middle of paper ... ...very touching with a lot of strong emotion behind the words "I share with you the agony of your grief... the strength of caring, the warmth of one who seeks to understand the silent storm swept barrenness of so great a loss. This I do in quiet ways that , on your lonely path, you may not walk alone..." (1, p.294).Reading Appendix A, I strongly agreed with Jaffe and Ehrlich's recommendations for more mandatory classes about religion, cultural, and coping with dying patients classes in the medical curriculum, because we cannot truly expect our medical staff to respond appropriately to everyone's needs without offending certain religious and cultural beliefs if we do not help them take a step in the right direction.In summary, my overall opinion of this book All Kinds of Love: Experiencing Hospice, by Carolyn Jaffe and Carol H. Ehrlich was excellent. This book challenged my morals and changed my views about in home care. It's reassuring that this kind of care is available not only for myself, but also for the people I love. Bibliography Ehrlich, Carol H., and Carolyn Jaffe (1997). All Kinds of Love: Experiencing Hospice. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.
Final Gifts, written by hospice care workers, Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelly, includes various stories detailing each of their life changing experiences that they encountered with their patients. Hospice care allows the patient to feel comfortable in their final days or months before they move on to their next life. This book contains the information considered necessary to understand and deal with the awareness, needs, and interactions of those who are dying. Not only are there stories told throughout the book, there are also tips for one to help cope with knowing someone is dying and how to make their death a peaceful experience for everyone involved. It is important that everyone involved is at as much peace as the person dying in the
God tells his children, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation). Death is one of the most frightening and confusing times a person can go through. Watching a loved one pass away is also one of the hardest trials a person can experience. Many people assume that death is a time of pain and the only thing that they can do is mourn and watch their loved one fade away from the earth. This is wrong. There are ways that people can turn a bad situation to good. Dying doesn’t have to be painful and full of suffering. The County Hospice staff makes sure of this. The Hospice staff not only takes care of passing patients physically, but they also take care of the patients emotionally and spiritually. Hospice staff also plays a key role in helping families during the grieving process.
Based on Three Reasons College Still Matters, there are three main reasons why a college education is so important. From an economical standpoint, an education is most of the time needed to earn enough money to live comfortably. Attending and completing college provides a possibility for future economic stability. Within a highly competitive workforce a college degree can put a foot in the door to a job of a person’s choice. Statistics show that people who obtain a bachelor’s degree or higher get paid more than those who do not obtain one. Many question the worth of a college degree because of how expensive it is, though some say that the money spent is an investment on a person’s future. One can say that the worth of a college education is within the eye of the beholder. Many q...
Being in hospice care is a better alternative than being stuck in the hospital to try to avoid the unavoidable. Common misconceptions about Hospice could include that hospice makes life more miserable; however, a physician expressed his findings in Hospice,“You can only fail a patient if you fail to understand and respond to their needs. We may not be able to cure all of our patients, but if we can make them comfortable in the last moments of their lives, we will not have failed them”..Hospice care gradually emerged in the 1970s, when groups like the National Hospice Organization were formed “in response to the unmet needs of dying patients and their families for whom traditional medical care was no longer effective.”Herbert Hendin, an executive director of the American Suicide Foundations illustrates a story of a young man diagnosed with acute myelocytic leukemia and was expected to have only a few months before he died. He persistently asked the doctor to assist him, but he eventually accepted the medical treatment. His doctor told him he can use his time wisely to become close to his family. Two days before he died, Tim talked about what he would have missed without the opportunity for a
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 AIDS quilt raises the question of the purpose of mourning. For whom do we mourn when we mourn? The foregrounding of the needs of the living and the creation of a community through the quilt point to mourning not simply as a process for remembering the dead and marking the meaning and value of their lives but also an attempt to create something out of that loss." (Sturken 199)
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
“The Faithful Wife”, written by Barbara L. Greenberg, uses first-person narration to depict the style, language, and theme of the poem. By using first-person narration, Barbara Greenberg was able to portray events and ideas very persuasively to the reader. In addition, this first-person narrator creates dramatic irony concerning the title in reference to the body of the poem.
The poem “The Old Maid”, by Sara Teasdale, takes place on a sidewalk on Broadway. The speaker in the poem is a woman walking with who you can infer to be her fiancée and she is describing a brief encounter she had with another woman in the car driving by her. The speaker describes the woman as “The woman I might grow to be,” She then notices how her hair color “…was as mine” and how “Her eyes were strangely like my eyes”. However, despite all these similarities the woman’s hair compared to the speaker’s was “…dull and drew no light”. Her eyes also did not shine like the speaker’s. The speaker assumed that the reason for the woman’s frail appearance was because she had never had the opportunity to know what it was like to be in love. In the last stanza, the speaker no longer looks upon the old maid but to her lover and knows that even though they may look similar she will never be like her.
Serving on a jury is a civic duty and an American tradition. However, some people view jury duty as a chore or as an event that negatively interrupts their lives. Some independent studies have shown that even jury duty has a devastating effect on married life. Due to this and other extraneous situations, there are only a few people who actually want to serve on a jury. This may lead to efforts by potential jurors to, in some way get out of their duty in a jury. What we know of as the current jury duty system should be changed so citizens are not forced to serve in this capacity and can still be regarded as a responsible civilian. As per the status quo, a trial jury is a constitutional right, a jury of ones peers or equals. However, ordinary people with little or no formal knowledge of the law should not be allowed to make a decision that would change a person's life.
Hospice Care refers to the focus on quality of care and life rather than treatment and curative options for someone and their disease. This type of care includes not only the patient, but also their family and physician. Dame Cicely Saunders states, “You matter because of who you are. You matter to the last moment of your life, and we will do all we can, not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.” With this quote, Saunders reflects what Hospice believes in and their commitment, or duty, for the patient. Patients who are terminally ill can be considered as patients with cancer, diabetes, and many more diseases. Very few cancer patients have a type of cancer that has a known cure, and unlike those patients many other cancer patients possess a type of cancer that is curable today. Terminally ill patients have to choose between continuing treatment or being provided with Hospice Care. Both hope and Hospice means that the patient can have both the benefit from treatments, which give them hope that the disease could be cured or at least reduce the symptoms, and Hospice Care, which provides the patients with relieve of pain and
Nurses are both blessed and cursed to be with patients from the very first moments of life until their final breath. With those last breaths, each patient leaves someone behind. How do nurses handle the loss and grief that comes along with patients dying? How do they help the families and loved ones of deceased patients? Each person, no matter their background, must grieve the death of a loved one, but there is no right way to grieve and no two people will have the same reaction to death. It is the duty of nurses to respect the wishes and grieving process of each and every culture; of each and every individual (Verosky, 2006). This paper will address J. William Worden’s four tasks of mourning as well as the nursing implications involved – both when taking care of patients’ families and when coping with the loss of patients themselves.
A jury has the right to reach a verdict they feel is proper even if it contradicts the law. If a jury feels that the outcome of a trial is unjust they can exercise their right of jury nullification. The doctrine of jury nullification states that “jurors have the inherent right to set aside the instructions of the judge and to reach a verdict of acquittal based upon their own consciences.” In other words, it states the jury has the right to judge the ethics of the law in any case if they choose. Jury Nullification most commonly appears in criminal law cases and originates from principles found in the Magna Carta. It is first used in American law in the colonial America case of Crown v. John Peter Zenger in 1735. Zenger was a German journalist
According to Haley and Daley (2013), cancer as the main cause of the terminal illness in the paediatric age. For the recent years, the survival rates of children with cancer have increased significantly with 7 out of 10 recovers (Selwood, Langford, & Wright, 2012). Haley & Daley (2013) also mentioned that parents act as the decision-makers and as the primary carer, moreover, physical and psychosocial developmental factors of the child affects the perception of death as temporary and the capability to communicate and make their own decisions. Moreover, parents make the decision for the child as for legal matters, but the child needs encouragement to actively participate and to develop the sense of authority. Children may have a different idea of pain and illness, for instance, they may think that they did something wrong that is why they are suffering. Children may refuse or not participate properly in any treatment without the supervision of the primary carer. Providing the child and family with health education during palliation as well as helping them to the transition to adulthood is an important task for the nurse. Derby, Tickoo, and Saldivar (2014) mentioned that the major difference of between old and younger adults is the need for extensive support of the family. Decision-making for older people might include the patient’s family, surrogates and Advanced Care Planning (ACP) at the time they are not able to make their own decision. Derby et al., (2014) stated that “ACP prepares for lack of capacity in decision-making and relieves the burden of decision-making on others” and surrogate decision-maker “is a person whom the patient designates to make decisions if/when he or she is unable to do so”. Older patients need a representative, mostly an elderly act as a primary carer to make the decision for them or someone who will make
When initially reading this assignment I thought it would have been easier for me to come up with five questions since I have worked in a nursing home for many years and worked as hospice aide for two years and have been very comfortable with end of life care. However, it wasn’t as easy as I thought the five wishes handbook I thought it did an excellent job at discussing a lot of issues and concerns that arise when someone is at the end of their life. When thinking back to all the families I have been privileged enough to help during that time in their lives I was able to create five more questions I thought would be necessary to ask.