Nursing assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Nursing assignment - Essay Example This confusion poses certain problems in the practice of critical care nursing. The nurse working in the hospice environment has a clear understanding of palliative care in allowing for natural death. But in the critical care area, this understanding is clouded and misinterpreted. The aim of this study is to investigate the lived experience of critical care nurses in relationship to their understanding and implementation of care based on their assumptions. Nurses, the primary caregiver to patients, are infrequently involved in the decision to terminate life saving measures. Many nurses question why a patient with a DNR order should be admitted into the critical care area, and what care is appropriate in light of a patient’s DNR status. The current economic crisis in health care is a very real and publicized problem. Hewitt & Marco, 2004, report that intensive care unit (ICU) costs have continued to climb and now total 20% of all hospital charges in the United States (p.19). Moreover, the growth rate of hospital beds has been 1.4% per year versus 6.2% for ICU beds (Hewitt & Marco, 2004). This issue is particularly relevant in patients with terminal illnesses where the goal of care and suffering are increasingly important issues. And should a DNR order influence other aggressive interventions that are only available to a patient in the ICU? Moreover, the term DNR has different meanings to different health care professionals, fostering a broad range of interpretation. The legal term DNR, indicates that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) not be initiated at the time of cardiac or respiratory arrest (Thibault-Prevost & Hodgins, 2000). However, there is confusion among nurse’s to interpret DNR as a measure to withhold all treatment (Puntillo, Benner, Drought, Drew, 2001). Critical care nurses are particularly affected by DNR orders because they aim to