Nursing in Palliative Care

Palliative nursing care is patient centred, i.e. focuses on patients' perceptions of their current situation and aims at maintaining or improving their quality of life accordingly. A prerequisite to this approach is that nurses regard the human being as a holistic being and as fundamental for its existence four different dimensions of being that overlap and shade into one another. As death approaches, levels of physical, mental/ emotional, social and spiritual being may be existentially shattered. Nursing care for patients and their families in this certain phase of life requires certain professional and personal skills. These challenges for palliative nursing care will be addressed, among others, by the subject of wound management. The discussion includes decision- making with regard to curative vs. palliative treatment of decubital ulcers and requirements for the treatment of ulcerating tumors. Furthermore, the range of palliative nursing skills will be shown by addressing selected examples of symptoms that may occur in the final phase.