Impact of Nursing - Palliative Care: Nursing Programs in Canada

Posted by Colin Butler on September 29th, 2017

Canadian Association, including CHPCA and CHPC-NG, has a centralized palliative approach: providing quality assistance to people until death, across their lifespan, in all practice settings.

Palliative Care: Terminology Explained
Palliative Care, a specialized medical specialty, seeks to improve a person’s quality of life once a chronic, life-limiting condition is diagnosed. In other terms, it is a model that is consistent with basic nursing values, including caring for patients and their families regardless of their age, culture, socioeconomic status, or ailment, and building robust relationships.

Role of a nurse:
Over several years, Palliative  nursing has emerged as a unique and highly valued specialty. In keeping with its principles, the nurses who work in this area focus on enhancing a person’s quality of life and on supporting family members and significant others. Their prime objective is to foster comfort and alleviate suffering, advocate for adequate relief from discomfort and pain, and support a dignified and peaceful death.

To summarize, here’s how nurses play a key role in the palliative approach.
- Establishing communication that echoes people’s values and health-care wishes or demands and honoring them.
- Advocating for and assisting people in their experience of living and dying.
- Providing comprehensive, organized, compassionate and all-inclusive care to individuals and their families.
- Providing pain and other symptom relief with psychosocial, grief and bereavement support in an effort to augment a person’s quality of life and death.
- Granting a tender-hearted and therapeutic presence to patients and families.

Need for a palliative care nurse
Applying a palliative approach to care would reduce inappropriate, painful, and costly hospitalizations and medical treatments. Also, it would, to some extent, reduce the significant emotional trauma which the patients and families may go through.

Canada would benefit from having more specialized palliative care services and more accessible palliative approaches for terminally ill patients. As a matter of fact, Canadian leaders from non-governmental organizations, nursing and governmental sectors welcome the thought of embedding this approach into mainstream care as well.  

How to become a palliative care nurse?
Understanding the supreme importance, there are many nursing programs in Canada – post-graduate certificate programs developed by the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association. In this 1 year program, the knowledge and skills of all health care providers is enhanced who are working with or caring for individuals living with terminal illnesses.
Graduates of this program may work in healthcare, social services, pastoral care, long term care centers, hospices, funeral industry, bereavement counseling and other areas where they can specialize in palliative care.
Author’s Bio: Author is an avid Blogger. The article is on nursing programs in Canada.