Role of the Pediatric Palliative Advanced Practice Registered Nurse - Essay Example

"Role of the Pediatric Palliative Advanced Practice Registered Nurse" is a great example of a paper on care.

Ashley is a nurse practitioner who is in her mid-30s. She works in a city hospital that operates an inpatient palliative care unit. In her work, it is common for her to interact with patients diagnosed with terminal illnesses. She works with an interdisciplinary team to optimize patients' quality of life where the end-stage disease is mostly cancer, including providing support for their families. Although she sometimes finds it emotionally exhausting, Ashley loves her job and is committed to providing the best therapeutic relationship. As Wittenberge et al. (2020) point out, palliative care settings are unique because they require nurses and allied health professionals to respond to patients' and their families' physical, psychological, and spiritual needs. In this movie set, Ashley works in the oncology ward where Jim, a 72-year old patient of Asian descent diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, is admitted.

Jim has a great sense of humor, and Ashley quickly develops a strong therapeutic relationship with him. His family is very supportive and visits him regularly, but is considering transferring him to a nursing home later due to illness progression. In the process of treatment, Ashley demonstrates compassion, empathy, competence, cultural sensitivity, emotional stability, and excellent communication skills. She is a team player who can comfort and employ a patient-centered approach to care. Professionally, she possesses strong assessment skills and clinical knowledge, which enable her to provide the best quality of evidence-based care and educate patients and their families about the illness's prognosis.

Ashley's roles as a palliative nurse are wide-ranging. She attends to the physical and emotional needs of patients and provides social support to their families. She especially helps Jim and his family navigate the healthcare system and involves them in decision-making based on their cultural values and personal preferences. The family members are anxious about the expected course of Jim's condition. They disagree about the best treatment options between radiation therapy and chemotherapy as they cite cost concerns and success rates, but Ashley is instrumental in helping them decide. She educates the patient and his family about his leukemia trajectory, symptoms to expect, the needed pharmacological treatment regimens and their benefits and risks, and alternative procedures and treatments. Ashley is also an advocate and caregiver. She advocates for and provides compassionate and safe care, including assessing symptoms, managing pain, administering medication, performing non-pharmacological pain relief, and social and emotional support. In general, the nurse mostly coordinates Jim's care delivery as part of a healthcare team. As Sherman and Bookbinder (2019) note, palliative care nurses plan and coordinate care and ensures care continuity across settings.

The spectrum of needs associated with the prognosis of leukemia in the advanced stages gets significantly complicated. For this reason, Ashley delivers palliative care as part of an interdisciplinary team. According to Watson et al. (2019), collaboration is essential in palliative care because it has different spheres of concern, including disease management, symptom control, and psychosocial care. As an advanced practice nurse, Ashley collaborates with specialized oncologists, nurses, nutritionists, social workers, and therapists. Team collaboration ensures effective addressing of all components of Jim's care. Besides, this collaboration ensures a seamless transition of care when the patient is transferred to a nursing home.

In some situations, Ashley assumes various leadership roles. For example, in addition to being the lead care coordinator, she oversees communication dissemination between Jim, his family, and the interdisciplinary team. Ashley leads the care planning process and particularly assembles and monitors the pain management task force. According to Thaxton and Neubauer (2016), a palliative nurse's responsibility is to promote evidence-based approaches to managing pain and symptoms. Most importantly, as an educator, during the patient's transfer, she contacts the nursing home where Jim is transferred to ensure that the nursing staff there have the right qualifications to deliver the best care.