Palliative care- Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Palliative care- - Essay Example Cancer is an incurable condition that is growingly becoming common among the elderly people as well as a bigger segment of the population. With early diagnosis and timely intervention, the patient’s quality of life can be gratefully improved. The challenge of managing chronic pain usually makes many patients to give up the fight to carry on with life. However, there has been progress in better pain management that seeks to extend the life of patients and improve their condition, thus limiting the option for assisted euthanasia. The family is the immediate primary care giver that should be listed in the care of the patient; it forms a useful link in the provision of service in palliative care. They provide psychosocial support and necessary home-based care for the patient. Key decisions that affect the patient’s medical condition should aim to incorporate their decision. Conflict of interests over the individual and family arises when the family’s expectations exceed the individual’s, hence the need to balance societal expectations to meet individual needs. The health care team should provide the best care and support for the patient to meet varying needs of the patient. They have to stick to the guidelines of the nursing or medical care when managing patients in palliative care or at any stage of medical treatment. The necessary link is provided in the Australia guidelines for medical provision of palliative care that stipulates the standards of practice, which should be used as a yard stick for performance. The patient rights are usually guided by the code of standards for practice outlined for reference. The key obligation should always be to ease pain and prolong lives, which are aspects of good care. Laurie’s experience with a terminal illness depicts the moral lessons that the media shapes following events that pity the societal structures in explaining causation that draws parallel from the various arguments, which point to the ideal