IntroductionThis assignment is aimed at demonstrating how the author understands the concepts of holistic therapeutic practice in palliative care and how the principles of palliative care are applied in the clinical setting. The author will demonstrate this in the format of a case study. There will be an introduction to palliative care with definitions of therapeutic and holistic care and some discussion around how the principles of palliative care are applied in the clinical setting. The author will then introduce the client chosen for the case study and identify an aspect of their care that is going to be explored and explain the reasoning behind this. Finally there will be an over ...view middle of the document...
Watson et al (2005) confirm that holistic care is looking after the whole person and not just the disease, be this psychologically, spiritually or socially. The whole concept of holistic care is defined in the World Health Organisation guidelines (2002) as it states that the psychological and spiritual needs of a patient is to be incorporated into their care.Doyle, Hanks, Cherny and Calman (2005) explain how therapeutic practice is an important part of palliative care nursing and it can be performed by all members of the inter-disciplinary team at different levels. They also go on to say that therapeutic practice can be formed as therapeutic relationships between nursing team and patient and their families or it can be through therapeutic interventions like counselling or therapeutic massage. The author relates this to the team she works in and the volunteer service will go and sit with patients giving family time to do other things, or the counsellor will offer bereavement support for the family and patient. All of these services can relieve symptoms in a patient and offer assistance emotionally within the family (Ferrell and Coyle, 2006). Harris, Nagy and Vardaxis (2006) define that therapeutics seek to relieve symptoms associated with a disease and this can be through therapeutic communication, touch, exercise or recreation, and they state how various aspects of care can be therapeutic.Case StudyLacey is a 21 year old young lady who lives at home with her parents, Carl and Angie. She has an older brother Matthew, who lives away from home with his fiancée. Up until ten months ago Lacey was attending University and living the normal active lifestyle with her friends. Lacey and a few of her friends were to attend Camp America for the summer and went to have routine medicals for this. It was diagnosed from the blood tests that Lacey had Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML). She underwent a course of chemotherapy and went into remission. Nine months after initial diagnosis Lacey became sick with a throat infection and it became fungal and Lacey ended up in the Intensive Care Unit. It was there that her family was informed that the leukaemia had recurred and there was no more curative treatment available for her and that she probably had only a few weeks to live. Lacey wanted to go home immediately when the Doctors had told her the news and she refused to speak with a counsellor regarding the diagnosis. At this point Lacey was referred through to the Community Hospice Team. Lacey deteriorated very quickly once she was discharged from hospital. For the first two weeks she went for third daily blood and platelet transfusions but they weren't enough to keep her symptoms at bay. She was started on a graseby pump with a combination of drugs to help stem her nausea and pain and help with her dyspnoea. Lacey was very withdrawn and weak and didn't communicate a lot with the nurses and used her Mum to communicate. Lacey's friends used to come and vi...
