Cancer Pain, End Of Life And Palliative Care (Term Paper Sample)

This paper primarily focuses on reviewing the various literature studies and scholarly works by various authors regarding pain among cancer patients, the provision of palliative care, and the effects this has on the patients’ end of life experience. The review will primarily focus on cancer patients. The review is subdivided into four parts. The first part entails key definitions of the main terms, that is, cancer pain, end of life, and palliative care. The second part gives the reader an insight into what various authors have written regarding this topic and the various research studies that have been carried out, and their recommendations. The third part is the research gap section, which reviews the existing research inadequacies regarding the topic. Finally, the conclusive statement part gives the reader a summary of what the literature review is all about and briefly highlights its key points.
Cancer Pain, End of Life and Palliative care
In the last decade, there has been a continuous increase in the number of persons diagnosed with cancer. Six million people globally are usually diagnosed with cancer annually. This has been necessitated by the type of lifestyle we are living in the modern era. Pain is described as a sensational, emotional feeling in parts of the body due to tissue damage. The prevalence of cancer pain has become a major global problem. The American Cancer Society supports the idea that cancer pain can be avoided and suggests society should always try to prevent cancer pain rather than normalize it. Just like any other form of pain on the human body, no human being should undergo subjective pain by cancer. There are two significant types of cancer pain. These are spinal cord compression pain and Bone pain. The spinal cord compression pain is experienced in the neck due to the tumor pressing effect on the spinal cord nerves. On the other hand, bone pain is usually experienced as cancer progresses and spreads to the body's bone areas (America cancer society, 2019).
Both developed and developing countries have purposely neglected the issue of cancer pain. It is often viewed as a non-issue. All governments should put up measures to address this significant public health issue since it is possible to provide adequate pain relief mediation to the millions of persons with cancer. This will, however, be actualized if the right policies are in place. Marie Curie defines palliative care as a specialized form of care provided to terminally ill patients. The main intention of palliative care is to provide comfort to the patient despite the disease symptoms' distressing effects. Palliative care majorly focuses on relieving the patient of the much pain they are experiencing due to the disease. Palliative care should be provided only by specialized medical personnel such as nurses, doctors (Marie Curie, 2018). Suppose the nurses do proper palliative care. In that case, the patients will not only be pain-free but also socially, psychologically, and spiritually nourished, and their quality of life will be improved. Palliative care nurses and physicians are specifically trained on how to manage and treat chronic pain for terminally ill patients, whereas the pain management specialist handles normal pain from diseases that are not chronic and less serious.
Nearing death is the most horrifying moment for nearly all humans. Predicting death's actual time is impossible; hence, cancer patients must plan well in advance of their demise when death nears. The final stage of death is the worst. Cancer patients that are nearing death are likely to showcase several symptoms. These include slowness in consciousness, slow metabolism, difficulties in secretion, low body temperatures, slowness in sensory organs responsiveness, difficulty breathing, and increased body pain.
End of life care is essentially provided to patients who are typically nearing death. Despite death being unpredictable End of life care is provided once the health care providers the patients to be about to die. The main focus of end of life care is to make sure the patient understands what death is and that it is a normal process. Therefore, the nurse provides the patient with the best care practices at this time (Craigs et al., 2018). This helps give the dying patient the best end of life experience and eases the thought of death.
End of life care and palliative care is always provided simultaneously with general medication care and patient’s specialized care. Research studies review that there are several categories of patients who constantly require end of life care and palliative care. These include patients suffering from ailments such as cancer, HIV, Aids, heart disease patients, and patients suffering from other terminal and chronic diseases. Providing this type of care is the most holistic thing that nurses can do. Palliative and end of life care can be provided in the patient’s home, in a hospital set up, or in care homes. There is no restriction on where the care can be provided. This type of care is not something that can be effectively done by one person. Proper provision of end-of-life and palliative care is made effectively when nurses, doctors, therapists, chaplains, and social workers work in collaboration to achieve the end goal, which is improving the patient’s quality of life. This multi-disciplinary team's intensity of care should be increased as the aspect of death inevitably nears.
Equally, Nurses are expected to respect all patients and communicate effectively with them as they provide palliative care services. Listening forms an essential part of the communication process. A good palliative nurse is one who can listen to the patient well (Mitchell, 2017). This will be helpful since it prompts such patients to open up to the nurse, and in return, the nurse can provide tailored palliative care to such a patient. Everyone, including nurses, would wish for a painless quality end-of-life care, and it is the nurses’ main to prove this care to the patients holistically.
Theoretical Studies and Justification
The world health organization defines palliative care as a Medical approach whose primary intent is to relieve pain to both the patent and their families. The scope of pain relief goes beyond symptomatic physical pain to psychological pain and, after death, pain experienced by the family members. The world health organization recommends that nurses practice palliative care during the end of life and manage the after-death pain and trauma the families experience. Several methods can be used to relieve the pain. Firstly, this can be done through counseling sessions. Therefore, all nurses should be keen on revealing the death news and counsel the families by making them realize that death is a regular occurrence and that we shall all die when our time comes. Secondly, the world health organization recommends Opioids as the best pain-relieving medication for cancer patients since they are fast and safe to use in this group of patients. Equally, there are highly affordable, especially to the middle and low income earning population, who constitute 78% of the total 40 million people require pain relief medication.
Recent studies from the world health organization depict that 34% of Patients who require palliative care are cancer patients. This shows the great importance of nurses' interjectory to such patients. The world health organization reveals that there have been stable recordings of the number of cancer patients who need palliative care; specifically, 80% of these cancer patients need constant pain relief medications (World Health Organization, 2018).
The world health organization (World Health Organization, 2018) research studies reveal that most patients who experience end-of-life care and palliative care are more relaxed until their last breath. Such patients have a positive attitude that they are going to die and only think of death a something natural that cannot be avoided. The world health organization reports that such patients are have attested to have had the best days before their death; their family members, too, are appreciative of this type of care since it helps them be calm even at the point of death. They are more stable mentally and can even make critical medical decisions for their dying loved ones since proper counseling and care have been provided. They are at ease seeing their patient is not in pain due to the disease symptoms.
According to The world health organization, 40 million people of the world’s population are in great need of pain relief and possible palliative care. Interestingly, it is merely 14 % of this population that get the necessary care that they need. This is mainly because of the many dubious national and global policies regarding applying certain medications to relieve patients of pain. These medicines are no longer accessible. Morphine is a common drug that was being widely used to treat pain in cancer patients. However, according to a recent report by the international narcotics board 2018, drug usage is significantly reduced due to