The aging population has only grown since the first edition of this comprehensive and seminal publication nearly 20 years ago. Based on the need to humanize rather than medicalize the illness experience for patients, this text delves into palliative care beyond the specific diseases affecting the patient. Instead, content focuses on the whole person and family.
Palliative patients struggle with chronic, debilitating, and painful conditions, and grapple with the fact that life as they knew it has already passed away. Families and friends reciprocally suffer, not knowing how to help and therefore become the secondary victims of the disease. This is not the challenge of a lone nurse, or a single physician, therapist, or social worker. Rather, palliative and hospice care requires the expertise and unique roles of an interprofessional team to help the patient and family strengthen their resilience, continue to find meaning and purpose in life, and cure what can be cured.
Palliative Care Nursing, Fifth Edition, delivers advanced empirical, aesthetic, ethical and personal knowledge. This new edition brings an increased focus on outcomes, benchmarking progress, and goals of care. It expounds upon the importance of the cross-disciplinary collaboration introduced in the previous edition. Every chapter in Sections I, II, and III includes content written by a non-nursing member of the interprofessional team. Based on best-evidence and clinical practice guidelines, this text presents comprehensive, targeted interventions responsive to the needs of palliative and hospice patients and family. Each chapter contains compassionate, timely, appropriate, and cost-effective care for diverse populations across the illness trajectory.
Key Features
New to The Fifth Edition:
"This 5th edition is an important achievement; it is a symbol of commitment to the field of palliative nursing, where we have been and where we are going."
-- Betty Rolling Ferrell, PhD, MA, FAAN, FPCN, CHPN
"This is a well-written reference from editors and authors who are all well-known experts in their respective fields. "
-- Darrell Owens, DNP, MSN, MS (University of Washington Medicine) Doody's Review - previous edition
"In this comprehensive textbook on palliative care nursing, editors Marianne Matzo and Deborah Witt Sherman succeed in bringing together the heart of nursing and the true meaning of palliative care with the most current evidence based practice."
-- GeriPal
In addition to the intended audience of students, educators, and practicing nurses, I would add that clergy, social work, and medical students would benefit, as would physicians-in-training working in palliative care. The editors are internationally known experts in palliative care, and their contributions to the field are immense.