Nursing and Palliative Care

The proximal reality of a patient’s death is often terribly tough for patients and families. decisions regarding the foremost applicable health care at the top of a person’s life usually address whether or not specific treatments are ultimately seemingly to learn the patient. These decisions could have a quality-of-life dimension. Nurses area unit often in a very position to supply steerage for patients and families endeavor tough choices and adapting to painful realities. It is not uncommon for a patient’s death to follow the withdrawal of probably life-prolonging therapies there’s no moral, moral, or legal distinction between stopping a medical aid and ne'er beginning it. suppliers ought to ne'er begin a medical aid they're not willing to discontinue. Decisions regarding care at the top of a person’s life usually involve quality-of-life issues. Nurses area unit duty-bound to supply care that features the promotion of comfort, relief of pain and alternative symptoms, and support for patients, families, et al. about to the patient. Throughout this position statement, the term “family” includes those coupled by biology or affection; family is whomever the patient says it's. whereas nurses ought to create each effort to supply aggressive symptom management at the top of life, it's ne'er ethically permissible for a nurse to act by omission or commission, including, however not restricted to, medication administration, with the intention of ending a patient’s life. Decision-making for the top of a patient’s life ought to occur over years instead of simply within the minutes or days before a patient’s death. Nurses is a resource and support for patients and families at the top of a patient’s life and within the decision-making method that precedes it. Nurses area unit usually ideally positioned to contribute to conversations regarding end-of-life care and choices, as well as maintaining attention on patients’ preferences, and to determine mechanisms to respect the patient’s autonomy.