Perception of Palliative Care from the Family: A Reflective Report

Running head: NURSING
NURSING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Palliative care refers to a specially designed care plan for people with a serious
illness. In a broad perspective the care plan not only improves the quality of lives of the
patients but also supports their families in this time (Kelley & Morrison, 2015). This is a
reflective report describing the perception of palliative care from the family. The story is
taken from youtube.com (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfmhPd8jROM). The report is
divided into five different stages to such as Reporting, Responding, Relating, Reasoning and
Reconstructing. Moreover the report is supported with scientific literatures retrieved from
Google scholar and PubMed.
Reporting
The report describes the perspective of Mark and Alice, whose son Adam had a car
accident and his condition was severe. As per the story, Adam’s condition was severe and his
chances of living was very low. One major thing highlighted in this story is the confusion and
stress of Mark and Alice, as they did not know anything about the condition of Adam after
several days. His parents need to take the decision whether they want to continue the
treatment or not. According to Alice, she knows about the concept of Palliative care, but she
has a misconception which indicates palliative care and end of life care are same and it makes
them anxious. However, they choose to go for palliative care for Adam. After several days of
treatment, there was no significant change in Adam’s condition which negatively affected the
psychological level of his parents. Finally, after seven weeks Adam responded on the
medication and later he goes through continuous improvement.

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Respond
After listen to the story of Mark and Alice, the first thing which came to my mind is
the emotional breakdown of them. At the time of the accident they were anxious as doctors
reported that the condition of Adam is critical. According to me, it is challenging for the
parents to face this situation. The stress due to the accident was severe and it was affecting
their life also. Moreover, it was frustrating for me to think about the condition when they
made the choices of treatment. I can understand how difficult it is for Mark and Alice to face
Adam every time when he was not responding to the treatment. According to me, Mark and
Alice, faced a psychological stress during the whole time and their condition got improved
only after recovery of Adam.
Relating
As a palliative care nurse, I have encountered similar situation like this. Due to the
critical situation, the health professionals are generally focuses only on the patient. These
situations are distinctively different from any other health situations occurred in healthcare
sectors as a minute mistake can make a huge impact in the condition of the patient. Therefore,
the environment is stressful and the families sometimes feel confused in this situations
(Beesley et al., 2018). This leads to a communication gap between the family or close person
of the patients and the health care (Foronda MacWilliams & McArthur, 2016). As a result,
they faces lot of stress and confusion which affected their psychological wellbeing (Foronda
MacWilliams & McArthur, 2016). In this situations it is important to provide adequate
information of the condition of the patient. Moreover, adequate communication with the
family members also helps to understand their perspective which helps to design a care plan
(Kelley & Morrison, 2015). In this case, Mark and Alice, took the decision that they want to
go for the palliative treatment, however, they faced severe challenges during the process.