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DNR Case Study

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DNR Case Study

Nurses are required to advocate for their patients while practicing the nursing profession. Patients, on the other hand, are encouraged to also speak out for themselves so that they can be involved in decision-making and meet their needs. Patients and their families are regarded as the parties with a better understanding of their problems. As a patient’s support system, the family is expected to have plans of their loved one in ensuring their wishes are achieved in case a disease progresses (Keeley, 2017). This guarantees the wishes of a patient will be met at end-of-life care.

Neglecting conversations concerning end-of-life decisions makes clinicians and families make choices for the patients that may not align with the patient’s unknown wishes. In the disease and treatment process, it is essential for a patient, the nurses, and the family to work together to ensure that transparency exists between them and best responses are sourced when there is a medical emergency (Nnate, 2021). When questions and explanations are requested, an understanding is established. Despite a patient’s capacity of consciousness, the focus of care should always be on them.

Planning ahead of time for the patient's care is vital since it ensure that the care provided aligns with their wishes and ensures a mutual understanding between family members and nurses. Nurses should keep in touch with family members and keep a complete record of the patient's status to facilitate planning (Keeley, 2017). Because a disease might have several stages and a patient may have other preferences on their care plans, communications should always continue even after an initial care plan is established. There should always be room for change since anything can happen in the course of the treatment process. As the disease progresses through several stages, nurses should always check in with the patient to protect their quality of life.

Nurses should not be reluctant to initiate end-of-life conversations even though it may seem difficult. Patient's wishes in care and the dying process will not be known without such conversations. Nurses can learn how to deal with ethical difficulties that arise at the end of life by engaging in such dialogues with patients and their families. To minimize uncertainties, patients and their families must also be heartened to initiate end-of-life dialogues. End-of-life discussions are meant to empower patients by allowing them to let out their thoughts and feelings and be accorded their wishes during end-of-life (Keeley, 2017). Advanced care planning helps families and healthcare facilities to save time and finances by avoiding legal actions to be taken when a patient is already dead.

In their daily practice, nurses are confronted with ethical dilemmas. Nurses' knowledge and abilities enable them to deal with ethical challenges (Nnate, 2021). A practical experience is when a patient was diagnosed with breast cancer and the patient informed the nurse not to tell her husband. The nurse was in a dilemma because he knew the best person to take care of the patient at home was her husband. The nurse had to convince the patient of the benefits of telling her husband to ensure that she receives the best care at home as there was no other close person identified. Patients' autonomy and privacy should be respected, but nurses are obligated to ensure the decisions made are for the best interest of the patients.

References

Keeley M. P. (2017). Family communication at the end of life. Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland), 7(3), 45. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs7030045

Nnate, D. A. (2021). Treatment withdrawal of the patient on end of life: An analysis of values, ethics, and guidelines in palliative care. Nursing Open, 8(3), 1023-1029. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.777