Psychological challenges for nurses working in palliative care and recommendations for self-care.

Working in palliative care services has an impact on the personal and professional lives of healthcare staff. The complex practicalities of the role and additional factors such as moral distress, burnout, compassion fatigue and death anxiety all impact on the overall quality of services and patient care. This article aims to highlight what is known of the practical and emotional challenges for palliative nursing care and offers recommendations to services to support staff at an organisational as well as individual level, to help create a more supportive workplace for staff and patients alike. It follows previous research on working in palliative and end-of-life care.

Through the looking glass: Highlighting the challenges facing healthcare professionals who have cancer.

BACKGROUND: Little is known directly about the experiences of health professionals with cancer. Current studies mainly employ pathographies as the information source and focus on doctors experiences only. OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to build upon our understanding of healthcare professionals who have cancer and considers practical management of barriers and gaps in care. METHOD: It uses conductive research to analyse and critique available studies, highlighting the experiences of health professionals throughout their diagnosis and treatment. It additionally presents thematic clinical observations, reflecting additional experiences noted by the author during her own therapeutic practice. RESULTS: The findings reflect a disparity between treatment of healthcare professionals suffering from cancer as compared to the general patient population. CONCLUSIONS: A number of recommendations are made to support healthcare colleagues to facilitate the care offered to this group of patients.

Managing conversations with patients about death and dying.

Caring for patients who are dying is both a challenging and demanding role. This is further intensified by the expectation that in addition to attending to physical issues, nurses are expected to manage the emotional and psychological aspects of the situation. The inconsistent nature of the care pathways between differing specialist services can often mean that open access to specialist services is not possible. As such, staff may find themselves inadvertently supplementing and often reinforcing interventions offered by specialist (psychological) services with little consideration given to capacity, experience and resources. As the most 'consistently present' professionals in such settings, it is important for nursing colleagues to be aware of the emotional and psychological themes common to patients who are dying. Thus, allowing patients access to supportive conversation with professionals as and when required, ameliorating unnecessary distress.

I beg your pardon?! using conditionals theory to understand doctor-patient communication problems.

BACKGROUND: Little attention is given to the process and impact of poor communicaton on the doctor-patent relationship. OBJECTIVE: The paper aims to employ Theory of Conditionals to help shed light on the experience from a patient perspective. METHODS: Doesnt really apply as this was inductive research i.e. based on other research in the area. RESULTS: Doesnt really apply except that The Theory of Conditionals enables us to understand the points of mis-communication as well as reasons behind misunderstandings across the medical consultation. CONCLUSIONS: A number of recommmednations are made to support GPs to reduce the impact of this problem on the medical consultation.

Using a frame of reference for talking to patients about death and dying.

Recent years have seen a recognition of the importance of talking openly to patients at the end of life about death and dying. This article aims to add to the existing body of literature on this subject. Conversations at the end of life can be difficult, particularly if the patient is experiencing mental distress alongside their terminal illness. A number of factors can disrupt a constructive and supportive conversation around death and dying. This article offers a frame of reference for nurses to consider when having such conversations.

COPD: a proposed multidisciplinary approach to psychological issues.

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) form a sizeable part of the ill-health demographic, both internationally and nationally, impacting markedly on hospital admissions. While prevalence rates of psychological comorbidity vary, there appears to be a consistent presence of depression and anxiety, and additional COPD symptom-related psychological distress. The research evidence base is limited, with seemingly little potential for expansion. Based on the available evidence, this study proposes a multidisciplinary team working model to support the integration of psychological input into the care of inpatients with COPD.