Health Care Assignment Sample & Examples – [Free Download]

Running head: HEALTH CARE
Health care
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1HEALTH CARE
Introduction
The National Palliative Care Standards has been developed by Palliative Care Australia
(PCA) to promote quality care at end of life. It laid down eight core values which every health
care workers must follow to provide quality care (Palliative Care Australia 2018). This report
pays emphasis to the core value one which mentions about the endeavor to maintain the dignity
of the care recipient and their family. Patient dignity is an act of showing the patient that their
feelings and concern are respected. Maintaining patient dignity at end of life has become an
important subject in palliative care because people at end of life are highly vulnerable to loss of
dignity. Loss of dignity could lead to depression, hopelessness and suicidal thoughts. Many
external factors like behaviors, beliefs and actions of others also influence the feelings of dignity.
As dignity is a basic human right and respecting dignity is important in medical practice,
considering the role of informal carers in maintaining dignity is important too (Akin Korhan,
Üstün and Uzelli Yilmaz 2018). To get further understanding about the topic, conducting a
literature review on the topic is important. The main purpose of this literature review is to
explore the significance of maintaining dignity of patients for informal carer during end of life
care
Body
Based on the search for articles related to the impact of dignity on end of life care, 10
articles were identified that gave different idea about the benefits of maintaining dignity for
informal care givers at end of life. Based on the review and analysis of the findings, four themes
were identified. The key findings/themes within the analysis of the literature have been presented
in a summary Table in table 1. These four themes mainly reflects the significance of dignity in

2HEALTH CARE
palliative care to promote quality of patient care, meet holistic needs of patient, improve
psychological outcomes for patient and promote their capacity for self-determination
(autonomy). The most common outcome emerging from most research study was that patient
dignity is essential to maintain quality of life (QoL) at end of life and promote patient autonomy
or decision making process during critical stage of illness too. The study by Kennedy et al.
(2016), Hosseini et al. (2017), Van Gannip et al. (2013) and Ostlun et al. (2019) reported about
quality of life related outcomes. Although the findings by Kennedy et al. (2016) lacked validity
because of poor methodological rigour, the other three studies evaluating outcomes from the
perspective of caregivers were highly reliable evidence as the findings were obtained based on
self-reported survey response. For example, family givers reflected increase in QoL by outcomes
like absence of anxiety, peaceful feeling among patients and good communication between
caregivers and end of life patients.
Other important theme was the promotion patient self-determination which was reported
in four studies. This is a very significant outcome as maintaining autonomy is not about giving
patients the choice to take decisions about treatment, instead it promotes patient engagement in
daily activities too. Hence, dying patients or critically ill patients can respond well to treatment if
their caregivers preserved their dignity during the care process. The other two theme of
psychological outcome and fulfilling of holistic needs are equally important outcome that shows
the significance of maintaining dignity to promote patient centered care and quality care at end
of life (Houska and Loučka 2019).