The purpose of the essay is to explore how nurses ensure caring and comfort for all patients and their families when transitioning to end of life care. Caring for the body as death approaches, lifespan considerations, cultural norms, legal and ethical framework for nurses, caring after a patient’s death, and the five stages of grief and loss, will all be explored throughout the duration of this paper, in relation to providing comfort and care, and the challenges and implications that present for nurses while caring for a dying patient.
As nurses, caring for the body as death approaches is extremely important. If a patient is reaching end of life, they do not deserve less care, they deserve more. As death approaches, it is important to make sure every patient is as comfortable as they can be. Transitioning from ‘curable’ care to end of life care, is challenging for patients, their
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A major implication of nurses working in end of life care, is the emotional toll their work would take. A qualitative study was undertaken in Sweden, assessing nurses’ experiences of caring for palliative patients. Eight Registered Nurses with varying experience (range from 3 years to 32 years) participated in the study, assessing their personal coping mechanisms and how they approached their role in end of life care. The nurses expressed a range of emotions, explaining that they all felt a strong desire to do their best and the difficulty in always being able to do so (Johansson & Lindahl, 2012). A nursing implication that all eight participants experienced was the difficulty but necessity of maintaining professional boundaries and relationships. The nurses had to distance themselves in order protect their emotional and mental health, to be able to provide professional support without compromising their emotional stability (Johansson & Lindahl,