Cancer nursing
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Comparative Study
Hospice patient and caregiver congruence in reporting patients' symptom intensity.
As healthcare increasingly moves out of hospitals, the care of patients with cancer is provided in the community with the help of family caregivers. In many cases, nurses depend on family caregivers to provide assessment data about patients. This makes the accuracy and dependability of the data given by caregivers particularly important. ⋯ Furthermore, the limited variance accounted for by the two sets of scores for each of the symptoms (R2 =.16-.26) indicated much more error in the scores than agreement between patient and caregiver. It appears that family caregivers cannot reliably report patient symptom intensity. Healthcare providers need to train family caregivers in conducting systematic assessments instead of assuming that they understand patient symptoms.
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The process of completing and executing advance directives (ADs) is not without problems and issues that need to be studied. Nurses, by the nature of their practice, are in a unique position to help patients complete ADs. The findings reported in this article focus on an open-ended question that was part of a larger quantitative survey. ⋯ Nurses also wrote about philosophical issues related to dying, end-of-life issues, and ADs, as well as institutional issues that have an impact on the assistance they can give patients completing ADs. In addition, the category "communicating" was frequently discussed by nurses. The importance of communication was a thread woven throughout their responses.