Paper
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Palliative Care Teams
Salma Hernandez, MSN, ARNP, BC, Surgical Intensive Care Unit, Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, FL, USA
The focus of a palliative care team is to incorporate a multidisciplinary approach to optimize the outcomes of end of life care. Palliative care teams are usually comprised of physicians, nurses, social workers and often members of the clergy. The members of the palliative care team provide insight towards decision making and treatment strategies for the primary healthcare team, bedside nurses, patients and their families. Often the palliative care team guides medical personnel through symptom identification and management, ethical dilemmas with end of life care, and the communication of painful information to patients and family members. The implementation of palliative care teams has shown to reduce the length of stay in intensive care settings, and increase patient and family satisfaction with end of life care (Center to Advance Palliative Care [CAPC], 2005). The ultimate goal of palliative care strategies is to empower patients by providing them with control, dignity, and comfort throughout the dying process.