The Importance of Palliative Care to the Older Adults Aged 65 Years and Above - Essay Example

Palliative Care Student’s name: Instructor’s name: Course code: Date of submission: Abstract The aim of this discussion was to explore the concept of Palliative Care in relation to the Palliative Approach. The discussion was in reference to older adults aged 65 years and above living in Australia. The data to be explored was from the secondary sources and in particular the past studies on the issue. Despite the fact that Palliative Care plays a very important role in ensuring comfortable life for the patients, the major challenge lies on the cultural diversity of the people living in Australia and more so the indigenous. This limits the access of the staff to the terminally ill people to provide them with care as shown in the appendix below. This is because some of the social services provided are considered to be against the norms of the indigenous people. Introduction In the world that we today, it is not easy to argue that we live in an isolated case where special needs amongst the members of the society do not exist. This is only possible if there were no sicknesses, accidents, death and many other factors that hinder one from operating normally. Because of this reason, there is an urgent need to embrace the concept of Palliative Care globally. Palliative Care is defined as the specialized medical care to those people that are suffering from some serious illness (Bhatnagar & Joshi 2011). Palliative Care normally is focused on providing patients with some kind relief from the symptoms, and the stress that one may be experiencing for whatever diagnosis. The ultimate objective of providing Palliative Care is to try and improve the quality of life of both the person suffering and the family as a whole. Palliative Care is provided using a Palliative Approach is founded on the fact that death is inevitable for each and every person and that for the old person admitted to the residential care, they are in their last chapter of life. In this essay, the discussion will based on Palliative Care among the older adults aged 65 years and above. This will based in the Australian context and will be discussed in relation to the Palliative approach. The objective is to try and show the important areas and that are proving to be challenging when it comes to providing care to this age span. The importance of Palliative Care to the older adults aged 65 years and above The older adults (65+) years are the old people in the society and who Palliative Care recognizes as people who are in their last chapter of life. This is also one group that needs more care because of their age when some of them tend to grow weak and become very vulnerable to different diseases. The Palliative Approach is used to help the patients in this age group to understand that death is inevitable and therefore the need to prepare for it. Perhaps this is because their body starts to go down and they are likely to be attacked by various opportunistic diseases. According to Monterosso et al (2007), Palliative Care using the Palliative Approach is important in a situation where certain health conditions cannot be cured and that the ultimate end, is death. In the older adults (65+), Palliative care is particularly important in ensuring that more personalized care is given as opposed to medical care and attention. Palliative Care which involves different parties help the old adults suffering to live a comfortable life and also to be able to function as normal as well as getting the appropriate treatment that can help suppress any symptoms and pain that they suffer from. In addition to this, Palliative Approach is important among the age span of 65 years above is important in addressing the important aspects of life such as spiritual, social and emotional as well as the cultural needs of the patients. This is because a long way to ensuring that apart from providing some special care to these senior adults using the doctors and other medical specialists, it helps create an environment where the family members can also partner. In many occasions, Palliative Approach care is mistaken to mean abandoning of medical treatment. However, this is not the case, as is the kind of care that is provided to any person that may be suffering from any life threatening ailment or even incurable diseases and that it is normally focused on providing total care as opposed to the curative treatment of the disease (Monterosso et al 2007). What this implies is that Palliative Approach accommodates medical treatment alongside other care and the reason for doing that is to help manage both the symptoms and pain alongside promoting a comfortable life for the old adult patients. Comfort care may include such measures as chemotherapy, surgery and any other form of medication. Further, Palliative Care is also important in addressing other aspect of life and in particular, how the patient should live rest of life. This is because through the Palliative Approach, the staff can engage in discussion with the relatives of the patient in order to set the required goals with regard to how one should be supported to lead a comfortable life despite the old age. This strategy helps encourage the provision of a holistic care (Bhatnagar & Joshi 2011). The discussion probably starts earlier in the chapter of the older patients and it incorporates both the patient and the relatives. The importance of this approach is to help both the relative and the patient to understand that it is not easy to predict when death will occur and therefore the need to focus on positive living and providing the best quality life alongside putting the plan to dealing with any changes that may occur in the process. However, despite the fact that Palliative Care through the Palliative approach can be of great help, there is need to take into account the fact that there are some fundamental challenges that may hinder its provision. One of the main challenges that is experienced both by the medical staff in providing the required support and care, is the cultural differences (Commonwealth of Australia 2006). This is because both the staff and the patients come from different cultural backgrounds. For instance, some of the nurses are not able to speak the language of the indigenous people. This makes the process of communication a very difficult problem. In general, the nurses from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD) and the families of the patient of the person with the disability or an illness, do experiences an extra layer of disadvantage when it comes to care provision and reception according to the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia report of 2003. Because of this kind of scenario, the environment for providing care is both culturally and linguistically challenging. In addition, to this the nurses also lack the required experience to serve patients from different cultural background because they lack the required knowledge about the people and the how the different systems work. In further, migration is also a very common practice among the non-indigenous people in Australia. As different families migrate from one city to another, they do so together with their families. The impact of this is that they either leave the patients in the hands of the medical staff only, or they move with them, something that makes it difficult to start the same care and support programme in the new city. This is because some of the illnesses could worsen if the medication schedule is disrupted. Finally, the problem of Palliative Care is experienced mostly in the Aboriginal parts of Australia. This is because the health services in some of the areas are not well advanced. This is because the appropriate health networks that facilitate the provision of care lack. However, despite all these, the nurses have a role to play in ensuring that Palliative Care through Palliative approach is successful among the senior adult patients. For instance, according to The Palliative Approach Toolkit, the nurses are expected to understand the environment in which they work and that is likely to affect service delivery to this group of patients. In so doing, the nurses will be able to ensure continuous and comprehensive assessment of the senior adult patients’ needs and wishes and as such provide the required pain and symptom management as per the laid objectives that have been clearly outlined by APRAC Guideline 15 on specific treatment preferences. This is to ensure that there is balance between the client and preferences and what Palliative Approach provides (Bhatnagar & Joshi 2011). In general, the Indigenous Australians lack the necessary access to different social services such as medical care, palliative care, bereavement support, domiciliary nursing care and the home care support as opposed to the non-indigenous Australians. According to (Brererton, et al 2011), this problem is more pronounced when it comes to the old-aged people above 65 years. This is because the majority of them live in the Aboriginal areas of Australia. One particular issue that is related to people living in the rural areas and more especially the elderly people of 65 years and above makes Palliative Care a very difficult task for two main reasons: first, these are the people who are deep into culture and some serious reservations about some of the modern ways of providing care which they consider to be against their norms. This is even worse when it comes to the older adults who are above 65 years of age. This is because they understand their culture better and therefore are very selective on some of the social services they receive. Second, since some of the families know so much about their culture, they are actually very skeptical of the origin of the medical staff that should care for their family members who are sick. This is because some of the family members fear that some of the staff will not understand what their culture demands (Haley & Daley 2014). This problem is actually more pronounced in the local people, the communities and in the families involved and such they may that such issues as age, age, kinship and other cultural relationship may all affect the process of providing care to the elderly. Conclusion This discussion was aimed at exploring the concept of Palliative Care among the elderly people aged 65 years and above in reference to the case of Australia. In so doing, the concept has been discussed in relation to the Palliative Approach which is a type of palliative care that recognizes death as an inevitable phenomenon and more especially for the elderly people who are terminally ill. Among the issues that have been covered include the importance of palliative care and challenges that the staff faces when trying to provide palliative care. In general, there is need to address the issue of cultural differences among the society if palliative care is to be effective and more especially among the indigenous people. References Bhatnagar, S,.& Joshi, S. 2011, Palliative care in young adults: an issue which needs higher and better awareness. Indian Journal of Palliative Care, 13(3), 173-174.doi:10.4103/0973- 1075.92332 Brererton, L., Gardiner, C., Gott, M., Ingleton, C., Barnes, S., & Carroll, C. 2011, The hospital environment for end of life care of older adults and their families: an integrative review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 68(5), 981-993. Clark, D. 2004, History, gender and culture in the rise of palliative care. In: Payne S, Seymour J, Ingleton C (eds.). Palliative Care Nursing. Principles and evidence for practice. Buckingham: Open University Press, 39-51. Commonwealth of Australia 2006, Guidelines for a Palliative Approach in Residential Aged Care. Enhanced version–May 2006. Haley, C., & Daley, J. 2014, Palliation in chronic illness.In E. Chang & A. Johnson (Eds.), Chronic illness and disability.Principles for nursing practice (2nd ed.). (pp. 232-248). Chatswood: Elsevier. Monterosso, L., Kristjanson, L., Aoun, S., & Phillips, M. 2007, Support and palliative care needs of families of children with life-threatening illnesses in Western Australia: evidence to guide the development of a palliative care service. Palliative Medicine 21 (8), 689-696 DOI: 10.1177/0269216307083032 Appendix 1: Poster showing the medical staff visiting an Aboriginal old-aged person Read More