Palliative Care Nursing - Essay Example

Palliative care is comfort and care that is normally given to dying patients. It usually focuses on the relief of symptoms such as dyspnoea and pain and other conditions (that include loneliness) that cause agony making the patient not enjoy their life. Palliative care aims to offer a possible comfortable life (dignified end of life) to the patient and his/her family (Gwin and Price, 2007).

In palliative nursing, the nurse’s determinations are normally directed towards increasing the patient’s quality of life and reducing symptomatology. The patient has arrived at a position where the disease cannot be cured further, the palliative nurses offer very vital comfort. BSN nurses are more experienced and learned than diploma-prepared nurses (Joishy, 1999).

Physician-assisted suicide is offered to the patient by a medical health professional as a means of ending the patient’s life. Ethical issues raised include the quality of life, autonomy, and acting in the best interests of the patient. The patient has the right to refuse medical treatment even when the nurse or the physician believes that the treatment is in the best interest of the patient.

In such a situation, withholding the treatment of the patient as requested is not assisting the patient to die but rather a show of free will and dignity towards the patient. The main challenge is the definition of what the patient’s best interests are and the identification of who should be allowed to determine the best interests, and if they can be met by administering a certain treatment or withdrawing it (American Society of Registered Nurses, 2010).