Palliative care nursing involves relieving pain and reducing the severity of symptoms of a disease. It involves taking care of patients who are suffering from pain, and hence palliative care nursing is essential for these patients and their families. Palliative care nursing enables the patient to enjoy life without pain until they die. This type of care involves early identification of a life-threatening illness, impeccable assessment, and treatment of physical, spiritual, psychosocial, or other problems associated with the pain. To achieve the best possible patient outcomes and the highest standard of care, interprofessional teams collaborate with the medical team, nurse practitioner, primary nurse, patient's family, case manager, physician assistant, and the patient. One key area to improve is attitudes towards work, putting in mind that how we say matters more than what we say. This is to say that a cheerful voice is maintained when speaking to the patient and other healthcare professionals. Another area of improvement can be in other nurses' assistance to reach the best possible outcomes, especially when experiencing difficulties.
Compassion
For a patient's well-being, nurses need to be compassionate and exercise empathy towards the suffering and pain that their patients are experiencing. Whether the patient is suffering from emotional or mental stress or in pain, compassionate care is one of the primary things a nurse can do to improve their patients' outcomes. Palliative care nurses in the department demonstrate compassion by forming a relationship with the patients and their families. Besides, patients will only trust compassionate nurses.
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This relationship is formed at the introduction the first time the nurse interacts with the patient by answering every question asked to the best of their ability and listening actively to all their concerns. To questions that a nurse does not have an answer, they make inquiries from interprofessional teams to address the patient's concern and answer their problem. Palliative care nurses also show compassion by providing touch by holding the patient's hand if the patient is feeling pain during a medical procedure (Katz, 2019). Besides, palliative care nurses always ask patients or their families if they need anything at the end of their shifts and ensure that the bell is within reach of the patient if they need to call a nurse.
Advocacy
To maintain quality of care, a nurse advocate works on behalf of the patient. In the palliative care team, safety is a priority, and hence advocacy is a necessity. However, for advocacy’s effectiveness, nurses must have persistence, maturity, self-confidence, pride in the profession, and ethical awareness. Therefore, in collaboration with interprofessional teams, the palliative care team ensures that the patients understand the reasons for their treatment regimen and that their voices are heard. Nurses have to influence each other since advocacy involves influencing and voicing concerns, especially to the nurse manager during monthly staff meetings. Advocacy ensures the safety of the patient and quality care and hence and that the environment is safely maintained at all times. To improve patient satisfaction and achieve the best possible patient outcome, nurse advocates work with interprofessional teams.
Resilience
Resilience helps palliative care nurses to minimize the stress that causes emotional exhaustion and burnout by enabling them to deal with a stressful work environment. Palliative care is associated with much pressure resulting from nurses watching patients die or seeing their patients suffering for long periods. Besides, some nurses can be transferred to other departments leading to a work overload to the remaining nurses, leading to stress at work. This is especially since most of the department nurses are resistant to change since most of them are almost at the retirement age. These nurses, therefore, take much time to adapt hence affecting the rate they get their work completed, which means poor outcomes.
Interprofessional teams also have to be involved in the change process through education to work together to reduce stress. If staff are prepared to deal with personal health and well-being and the change, resilience can have a positive outcome (Ireland et al., 2015). Along with the changes, the organization can also make positive policy changes that can improve the outcome. For instance, replacing two nurses placing midlines with one nurse can reduce waiting time for patients to be discharged or receive medications and treatment, hence improving outcomes.
Evidence-Based Practice
EBP has been in palliative nursing to achieve the best patient outcomes. For an evidence-based practice to be effective in the organization, change has to take place. This is because EBP is aimed to promote patient safety, to enhance patient care, and have better outcomes, which can only be possible through changing and improving ways in which palliative care nurses practice (Gigli et al., 2020). The palliative care nurse team exercises compassion and care, making the patients respect and trust them since this care eliminates fear. Interprofessional teams and effective communication have proven effective in proving patient outcomes. EBP is evident in the organization's patients survey.
Summary
Nurses form relationships with patients and their families and are in the front line leading the interprofessional teams. In nursing, the use of iCARE is essential within an interdisciplinary team. This is founded on evidence-based practice and is used along with resilience, compassion, and advocacy to provide patient safety, best possible outcomes, and high-quality care. The components of the Icare model can be utilized in transitioning care from a healthcare facility to home. Besides, the Icare Model can be effectively utilized in collaboration with interprofessional teams.
References
Gigli, K. H., Davis, B. S., Ervin, J., & Kahn, J. M. (2020). Factors Associated With Nurses’ Knowledge of and Perceived Value in Evidence-Based Practices. American Journal of Critical Care , 29 (1), e1-e8.
Katz, A. (2019). Compassion in practice: Difficult conversations in oncology nursing. Canadian OnCOlOgy nursing JOurnal , 29 (4), 255.
Ireland, A. M., Susie Newton, M. S., & Colleen, O. (2015, November). Practice innovations, change management, and resilience in oncology care settings. In Oncology nursing forum (Vol. 42, No. 6, p. 683). Oncology Nursing Society.
