Management of Pain and Breathlessness in Patients with Lung Cancer

Running head: BACHELOR NURSING AGGIGNMENT
BACHELOR NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

BACHELOR NURSING ASSIGNMENT1
The given case scenario is about Tom who is an old aboriginal man. His age is 55 and at
present he is suffering from lung cancer and the metastases has spread through out the body. He
has taken admission in the hospital as he has fallen down the day before. On that day Tom was
suffering from severe breathlessness and he has come to the last stage of his life. Along with
pain, Tom is also suffering from severe pain because of the multiple metastases that has spread
throughout his body. Tom has already gone through chemotherapy, so from the diagnoses the
pain that the patient had suffered can be understood. On the day of the incident, Tom was present
with his wife and son. He was suffering from severe pain and breathlessness and another
important matter of concern is that the communication between the family members and also the
way the family members behaved with the nurse and doctors. The way they were speaking were
not appropriate. At such a crucial stage, when a patient has reached the last stage of life, the
family members would have behaved more softly and kindly.
In the given case the patient is suffering from severe pain because of lung cancer and the
multiple metastases that he was suffering since long ago. Pain is one of the most severe problems
especially to the cancer patients and also when they have come in the last stage of the life. The
palliative care is one of the important aspect of pain management though it is often
underestimated (Chou et al., 2016). Providing palliative care to the cancer patients involves the
nurse to assess all the physical, social, psychological, spiritual aspects and other aspects related
to the patient. The syndrome must be ascertained properly so as to determine which intervention
must be applied to the patients. Normally, a patient needs both medicines and support from the
family members and also nurses and the doctors to properly cure the pain (Song et al., 2015). At
such extreme cases of pain, like the scenario, proper intervention needs to be taken by the nurses
to take care of the patient at the end stage of his life. The nurse at first prepares an accurate goal

BACHELOR NURSING ASSIGNMENT2
for curing the patient. In the case of the management of pain, the goal should be to eliminate the
causes of pain and analgesia should be provided or both can be done. The nurse must not assume
the amount of pain that the patient is suffering, it is better to allow the patient to describe about
pain that he is suffering (Manworren, 2015). In order to manage the pain, the source of the pain
must be eliminated. The analgesia must be provided if only needed and when the appropriate
time comes where it can be applied. The responsibilities or the intervention of the nurses
includes assessment, management and evaluate the effectiveness of the management of pain and
for doing these, the nurse has to provide a lot of effort. At first the nurse must determine the
nature of the pain from which the patient is suffering. In this case, the pain of the patient is
because of the lung cancer from which the patient is suffering since a long time. The impact that
pain is having on the patient must also be properly analysed (Ung et al., 2016). The next step is
to identify properly how the patient is perceiving the pain and also his expressions. The nurse
must take the decisions whether the analgesics can be administered or not and also to determine
when the patient needs analgesics.
In this case scenario, Tom needs the analgesics as he is suffering from severe pain. The
next most important aspect is to identify the amount of dose that the patient needs in order to
combat the pain. Analysis must also be done about how much effective the analgesics is. The
nurse must also be aware about the side effects of the medicines that are administered as the side
effects can increase the disease to a large extent. It must also be determined why the analgesics
that are applied is ineffective (Kalinowski et al., 2015). The nursing interventions are very much
needed to increase the comfort of the patient and also to relieve the pain because after the patient
gets admitted to the hospital, the nurse is the only person with whom the patient spend most of
the time per day. In the given case, the patient is in the last stage of his life, so he do not have