At the beginning of the shift, the new nurse walks onto her unit optimistic and light hearted. She places her belongings in her locker, activates her Vocera, and gets her clipboard ready for a brief morning meeting and shift report. She walks into each of her patients’ rooms in the early morning with the night shift nurse, introducing herself and discussing today’s plan of care for each patient. When she arrives to her last patient’s door, the night shift nurse explains that this particular person will be ‘difficult’. She hears “he is quite a handful,” “he’s really sick but just hasn’t died yet,” “the room is full of family,” “everyone is hysterical,” and “you won’t be getting out of his room any time soon.” A few other staff members collect …show more content…
As the morning goes on, she dreads entering his room and makes herself busy to shorten the time in which she may have to spend there. Finally, when the time comes to complete her morning assessments, she enters the room to find something completely bazar. Several family members are kneeling on the floor chanting what sounds like a prayer. The patient’s daughter greets her at the door with a kind smile and eyes filled with tears, and as she looks toward the bed, she sees two young children kissing her patient’s hand, kneeling beside the bed. Her patient is resting supine in bed attached to telemetry monitors. His skin is pale and mottling, his respirations are shallow and slow, and his heart beats only half as fast as it did yesterday. His family members, all surrounding the bed and praying on the floor, are mourning their anticipated loss and are sobbing uncontrollably. He is terminally ill and today may be his last …show more content…
Terminal illness is defined by Kersey-Matusiak as “a stage of a disease or illness state for which there is no cure, and during which hospice care may be provided.” Terminal illness could be in the form of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or end stage lung cancer, for example. Unfortunately, not all nurses are competent in working with terminally ill patients are their families, but while it is challenging, it is vital for improvements to be made. According to Whitten (2012), “one criticism of health care workers is their difficulty in responding to the emotional circumstances of patients who are terminally ill. Emotional care of the patient during the terminal stages of illness is being reported below patient standards.” This all stems from the lack of culturally competent nurses throughout the country and among many different generations. The Unites States’ population is growing more and more diverse, therefore we must consider that with this increase in diversity, we have to address the various cultural concerns that contribute to the terminally ill patient population. These members of different cultural groups have differing preferences when considering their