Advanced Practice Palliative Nursing

The book entitled “Advanced Practice Palliative Nursing” is a comprehensive advanced nursing review and an evidence-based and up-to-date literature as one ready reference for palliative care nursing. The book has been divided into different sections concerning a particular specialty requiring palliative care nursing or related illness management. The book is well-supported with many examples based explanation making a unique academic armamentarium.

The book covers the role of palliative care nurse and its involvement in various clinical settings, including emergency, intensive care, medical, surgical, oncology, cardio-vascular, and transplant units. The need of palliative care in all these specialized units is well emphasized and specialized nursing care in these units would be able to deliver better care requiring palliative support. The children and elderly are special groups with special needs. An understanding of the concepts among these extremes of ages is important to provide best medical nursing support. The chapters included in the book cover various aspects of palliative nursing care from elderly to children. This would be useful for nursing professional working in pediatric and geriatric units. Since the roles of ambulatory units are emerging, the book mentions a separate section related to advanced palliative care practice in ambulatory care setting. This would be more useful as home based care is always preferred by majority of terminally ill patients and their family members. With the introduction of this section, the ailments which need medical attention may be provided to patients with advanced disease in ambulatory setting and thus would improve quality of life without a long stay hospital admission and associated financial concerns. The social support and community based palliative care is one of the most important but challenging aspects of care of patients with advanced disease. The role of nurse in community based palliative care services is paramount and remains the most important member of the palliative care team in the community. The book refers a complete section that covers all aspects of nursing support and care in community based programme with regards to provision of advanced palliative care practice. This section would definitely be useful for all nursing professionals which are attached to home care teams and community health centers and mobile vans.

The palliative care remains an interdisciplinary and multidimensional approach for improving the quality of life of patients with advanced disease and requiring supportive and palliative care. Nursing professional remains one of the most important members of the palliative care team. Also, the involvement of nurse for interaction among various teams remains paramount. The contents in the book would help the nurse to provide effective interdisciplinary team collaboration in the best interest of the patient requiring supportive and palliative care. The role remains in all aspects of patient management, administrative support, family support etc. At times, the nurse remains the first point of contact for patients with regards to various concerns including physical symptoms, psychosocial and spiritual aspects. The book includes a chapter where in the chapters related to various symptoms management including pain management have been very comprehensively described. Nurse being the first point of contact would be able to identify and take appropriate measures to provide best supportive care to improve quality of life based on knowledge in these chapters. Also the communication skills become important in these groups of patients not only for them but also for the family members. The section in communication would help the nurse to understand the complexities related to communication skills. The background information mentioned in chapters of this section would help the nurse to understand the goals of communication and necessary information required during the interaction with the patient and their family members.

This hand book would be of utmost importance not only for advanced practice registered nurses but would add to knowledge acquisition in other general nursing professionals. This book would be handy and ready to refer advanced literature for all trainees for their nursing practice and examination preparation as well. This book would provide up-to-date information with practical tips to nursing professionals. This book would be an important addition for the development of practice programs or protocols, conducting educational programs for patient education and other professionals. It would be easy reference for formulating research in palliative medicine nursing. However, with more evidence being added in palliative medicine specialty and emergence of concept of palliative nursing, this book would need updating in the near future.

Overall, the book is well written in a very lucid, comprehensive and evidence based manner for advanced palliative nursing care. This book would be important academic armamentarium for nurses involved in hospice and palliative medicine units.