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Journal of Palliative Care & Medicine | ISSN: 2165-7386 | Volume 8
August 27-28, 2018 | Boston, USA
4
th
International Conference on
Palliative Care, Medicine and Hospice Nursing
Role of nurse practitioners: Facilitators and barriers to addressing palliative care in a primary care setting
Rojee R Maharjan
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, USA
P
alliative care focuses on optimizing the quality of life of patients with life-threatening illnesses by helping alleviate pain, treating
the symptoms of patients with chronic illnesses, and by providing psychosocial and spiritual support (Anderson & Puntillo, 2017).
Palliative care can be initiated at any stage of a serious illness while continuing the treatment; it is a comprehensive patient-centered
approach that can help patients and families in multiple ways. Palliative care includes an open discussion about coordination of care
and support for the family. While the primary purpose of palliative care is to address the distressing symptoms that a patient may
be experiencing, one of the main and most important goals of palliative care is to help alleviate the legal and financial burdens of a
life-threatening illness by providing counselling on advanced care planning, which will be the main focus of this integrative review
of literature. Many factors have been identified as barriers to initiating palliative care discussions, which includes the clinician’s
confidence in their own ability to provide palliative care due to lack of education or access to training sessions, the patient’s lack of
knowledge about palliative care, the availability and accessibility of palliative care facilities, and misunderstanding that palliative care
is a terminal care (Zheng et al., 2016).
rmaha1@stu.mcphs.eduJ Palliat Care Med 2018, Volume 8
DOI: 10.4172/2165-7386-C3-021