Holistic Palliative Care: Managing Personal Beliefs and Values

Running head: PALLIATIVE CARE
Palliative Care
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Palliative care
Palliative care is offered to persons who have a terminal illness. It aims at improving
the quality of life of the patients. (Australia, 2005). Its role is to offer comprehensive care
which puts in to consideration all the facets of human life, i.e., physical, social, emotional and
spiritual. It aims at treating symptoms of the four areas of life just mentioned. It may include
services such as relieving pain and other symptoms, support for people to meet cultural
obligation and links to other services such as home help and financial success. As indicated
by Pratt and Wood (2015), palliative care is offered to any individual, regardless of age and
gender, who has been diagnosed with a condition that cannot be treated. It could be provided
at home, at the hospital, in a hospice or in a residential aged facility (Duckett and Willcox,
2015). Among the health care team involved in offering palliative care, is a nurse. Every
nurse has their own personal values and belief that significantly dictate their world view and
interaction with patients. Personal beliefs could negatively affect nurse-patient relationship if
not monitored. In this essay, holistic palliative care is going to be identified and explained.
Additionally, the essay is going to outline some ways of managing personal values and
beliefs and explain how personal beliefs affect the interaction between a nurse and the
patient.
Holistic palliative care focuses on wholesome care rather than just physical care.
According to World Health Organization (2014), palliative care that is holistic aims at
improving life’s quality of both the patients and caregivers through preventing and relieving
suffering and treating other problem, physical, psychosocial and spiritual. This kind of care is
guided by the great wealth of knowledge that other areas of life such as the cultural or
spiritual may have some implications on the physical wellbeing. To effectively treat and
support a palliative patient, it is important that all these areas be looked at. As demonstrated
by Wiener, Weaver, Bell and Sansom (2015), this greatly improves the quality of care and

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longevity of the person involved. To understand the significance of the wholesome/holistic
approach, we illustrate using an example. Following is the example. Research has
demonstrated that the cultural and spiritual beliefs of patients significantly guide their
decisions, including those that pertain to health. Therefore, it is important to discuss with the
patient about their spiritual, cultural or other beliefs that have the potential of interfering with
optimal care. It follows also, that a nurse need be more objective and acceptive when offering
care so as not to create any barriers to effective care. Since the main aim of holistic care is to
treat the patient wholesomely, the nurse should sometimes put their beliefs at bay if it is for
the better of care.
Each person on the universe is unique in their own ways. For this reason, one can
conclude that it is only fair that palliative care be individualized for each patient. We have
seen above that palliative care aims at healing the body, the soul and the mind. Offering
holistic palliative care greatly improves the life of a patient. Studies have reported that
patients refer to nurses who offer holistic care as those nurses who truly care. Considering the
role of a nurse, it might seem overwhelming to offer such kind of care. When you consider
that the nurse must deal with several patients, their care givers and that the time is limited,
holistic palliative care may seem like a goal that cannot be accomplished. As a nurse
therefore, the whole experience could be draining and tiresome. To the relief of the nurse,
extensive research has demonstrated that what is important may not be the amount of time
that is available but how the nurse spends the time that is available (Brant, 2017). The focus
should be striving to make the most out of the available time. This has the potential of
improving outcomes leading to happier patients. Nurses would also be happier since it would
be a sign of success on their work. Numerous ways in which a nurse can make the best out of
the time available with a client have been developed. These are very simple activities such as
smiling at the patient and calling them by their names.