Holistic Comfort in Nursing Care - Essay Example

Introduction Nursing care is a core ingredient that determines the recovery and comfort of any patient and especially the ones with terminal illness. It can be argued that proper nursing care is mandatory to ensure that terminally ill patients receive proper medical attention and care from professional nurses. This prepares them psychologically for departure (death) and they can also recuperate at home close to loved ones and family members. This paper is written to look at the importance of nursing care to terminally ill patients. Comfort is an intrinsic attribute of nursing and patient care practice. Holistic comfort is crucial in the healing process of a terminally ill patient (Watson, 2002. pp 10). It can be argued that the concept of holistic comfort is significant because it’s a key measure in which medical and health care standards are gauged. If a patient is not comfortable the chances of recovery are limited and this could result to detrimental effects. Nursing and health care practitioners are aware of the role played by comfort in the lives of their patients. This precipitates the nursing professionals to know the degree of comfort they avail to their patients and the impact the intervention on the patient (Watson, 2002. pp 30). For instance nursing care assessment helps a nurse know what strategy to employ to ensure effective comfort for terminally ill patient. There is no defined mode of measuring comfort attained by patients when they receive comfort. To begin with, there are different interpretations and perceptions of comfort. Comfort can be interpreted differently by different people in different situations (Katherine, 1992. pp 5). Hence, the knowledge of holistic comfort to the medical fraternity as part of healing process can be utilized as part of palliative care practice. In the cases where the medical officers have to deal with terminally heal people who need intensive care and attention holistic comfort can be of great help. It can also be utilized when dealing with people experiencing acute pain like women in labor and patients who have recently had an open heart surgery (Katherine, 1992. pp 6). Comfort has been ruled out as an appropriate measure with which patient satisfaction is measured. Comfort to patients affects the way they respond to medication and the treatments they are being offered in the hospital facility. On the other hand, there are however no operational or theoretical measures put in place to ensure that the standards of comfort are met but medical personnel can ensure that this is possible. There are several modes of instilling comfort on patient like touching and talking and listening to the patient (Katherine, 1992. pp 4). This actions makes the patient feel that people around him care and are concerned about his well being. It is thus deemed necessary for the medical practitioners to know what comfort is and how to implement it to patients during health management. Medical practitioners should just not be geared towards the treatment of the physical ailment but should also understand the physiological needs of a patient. From the medical literature there are several modes of intervention where by the nurses suppress the adverse effects of discomforts such as nausea, fatigue, and pain (Katherine, 1992. pp 2) but they need to be open minded and know how to deal with distress from the patients perspective. There are four key areas in which patients need to experience comfort. The first area constitutes of the environment around them which includes the temperature, presence or absence of noise, and other external factors (Watson, 2002. pp 30). The environment if conducive can be used to stimulate comfort or discomfort depending with a particular patient. Consecutively, the emotions of the patient during the time of illness may also affect the way the patients respond to treatment. Patients need to feel at ease and elated in control. Hence, practitioners should be able to learn the art of instilling hope to the patients and assuring them that everything will turn out alright. Illness and associated symptoms affect each patient differently making them experience different kinds of discomfort depending on their disease (Watson, 2002. pp 30). Thus comfort can be provided by trying to curb the ill symptoms which accompany each disease Though unknown to many, patients are very particular about the attitude and approach of the hospital staff. Some staff members are unethical and not committed to their duties. These kind of practitioners add to the remorse of the patients and reduce their chances of getting well soon (Katherine, 1992. pp 4). Hospital life is another factor that contributes to how patients respond to their medication. All health care staff should be committed to making the hospital setting as homely as possible to help ease tension and forlorn feelings (Watson, 2002. pp 29). In most instances taking such precautions ensures that patients recover quickly and gain a positive attitude towards hospitals. A grave set up only aggravate the tense situation and reduces chances of recovery (Katherine, 1992. pp 3. It is therefore important that the nurses take a keen attention on the environment they set up for their patients. There are two key considerations to be made when analyzing intervention and they include the greatness of the unmet needs of patient and degree of needs as seen in nursing literature (Katherine, 1992. pp 4). Once these are established, the nurse is in a position to decide the actual measures to take in order to assist the ailing person. Purpose of the analysis. The purpose of analyzing the concept of holistic comfort is to bring to light the great role comfort plays in lives of the sick people. It also seeks to bring to limelight to the comfort gauging mechanism thus precipitating the medical team to work as a team and reach a consensus on what best fits the patient (Katherine, Y. 1992. pp 8). The analysis brings together a pool of ideas expressed concerning the perception of holistic comfort and how its intervention can be measured. These ideas are further analyzed and refined so as to ensure flexibility in the health management and offer the patient the best possible care. Most of the ideas brought forth are not sufficient, because they present themselves as one sided or they have left out crucial details (Katherine, 1992. pp 7). The ultimate goal of this analysis will be to determine one key methodology to be utilized in order to gauge the level of nursing intervention in an attempt to provide comfort to patients. Nursing care and healthcare seeks to highlight the important of proper attention and care to a patient. The best option that can be employed is taxonomic structure of comfort (Katherine, 1992. pp 7). This is a graph which provides all interrelated aspects of comfort and it defines comfort from the patient perspective. So after all there is a model that can be utilized to measure how the nursing intervention is affecting the patient. This way it becomes easy to assist patients in need as there is a clear way of reading their response to the support they get from the health care staff (Katherine, 1992. pp 7). Conclusion. There are some actions that nurses should perform in order to initiate a feeling of comfort to the patients. These actions are referred to as intervention. Comfort is defined as a medical state in which a patient is free to be or become what he really wants to become. All aspects of comfort are interconnected and that means that they operate like a single unit implying that medical personnel can not cater for physical needs of a patient without worrying about their social, psychological and environmental needs because their efforts will be futile. This is because if any of those needs are not met, comfort will not be achieved as desired. So when attending to holistic needs of a patient, nurses should be keen on the interplay of all these elements inclusive of the basic needs of the patient. Taxomic structure of comfort puts into consideration all the elements that interplay to help nurses attain results on impact of their intervention on patient’s suffering. For instance, through the implementation of this structure comfort on the patients is attained and as a result quality in health management is achieved because comfort is the prime measure of quality in health care. Work cited Katherine Y. K. 1992. Holistic Comfort: Operationalizing .The Construct as A Nurse Sensitive Outcome from the Nursing Science. Aspen Publishers .Inc. 15(1): 1-10 www.aspenpublishers.com Accessed 20/06/07 Watson, J. 2002. Instruments for Assessing and Measuring Caring In Nursing and Health Sciences. NY: Springer. Read More