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Palliative care for elderly People
Donart Koci
Affiliation: University of Gjakova, Kosovo
Keywords: Palliative care , health professional , serious illness , quality of life .
Categories: Medicine, Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
DOI: 10.17160/josha.8.2.742
Languages: English
Patient health is the primary issue for any health professional. Therefore, we, as students in the nursing branch and as future nurses , want through this research work to expand our knowledge and at the same time to offer before you our experience with terminal patients who were part of palliative care. Palliative care is specialized medical care for people living with a serious illness. This type of care is focused on relief from the symptoms and stress of a serious illness. Palliative care teams specialize in treating people suffering from the symptoms and stress of serious illnesses such as cancer, congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and many more. Palliative care can be helpful at any stage of illness and is best provided from the point of diagnosis. In addition to improving quality of life and helping with symptoms, palliative care can help patients understand their choices for medical treatment. The organized services available through palliative care may be helpful to any older person having a lot of general discomfort and disability very late in life. Palliative care can be provided along with curative treatment and does not depend on prognosis. Our main goal is to show the role of the nurse in the care that a patient needs from an incurable disease and almost life does not make sense, meaning that we are one of the key factors in improving the quality of his/her life . I have reviewed the literature summarizing the necessary data and information regarding palliative care. The paper also uses comparative methods, thus comparing the level of development of palliative care in the developed countries of the world and in Kosovo.