This book is written for faith community nurses (FCNs) and provides information and resources necessary to be successful in the practice of faith community nursing. This specialty nursing practice combines the caring aspect of nursing with the spiritual and the sacred. The book is divided into three parts. Part I provides an overview of faith community nursing practices its roots, practice models, roles, and legal and ethical parameters. Faith community nursing is the specialized practice of professional nursing that focuses on the intentional care of the spirit as part of the process of promoting holistic health and preventing or minimizing illness in a faith community. Parish nursing is a recognized specialty practice that combines professional nursing and health ministry. Health care practitioners who make several small changes in how patients’ religious commitments are broached in clinical practice may enhance health outcomes. There are four models through which faith community nursing practice is delivered: the institutional model, the congregational paid model, the congregational volunteer model, and the paid consortium model. Part II includes chapters that inform the FCN about initiating a faith community nursing ministry, assessing the health needs of the faith community, health education, teaching, and program planning and evaluation. Part III presents information on meeting the special needs of the faith community and includes content on acute and chronic care needs, palliative care, and grief and loss. Additional chapters focus on connecting with community resources and vulnerable populations.

Caring for the dying and their families can be one of the most emotionally fulfilling, personalized, and loving acts a nurse can provide. This book, about the CARES tool, attempts to convey essential information on how to effectively care for the dying in a condensed and readily applicable format for the bedside nurse. It is divided into seven parts. A general background and the establishment of the CARES tool are found in Part I. The second part presents a detailed breakdown of the CARES tool by sections (comfort, airway, restlessness and delirium, emotional and spiritual support, and self-care). Part III shares the theoretical foundation of the CARES tool, and emphasizes the need for patient advocacy and strong communication skills. It also explores what can be done to promote a peaceful death. The fourth part consists of two chapters which address the changes in our culture that must occur and the new role of the doctor of nursing practice (DNP) for translating the current literature into evidence-based practice. Part V examines how the use of the CARES tool can impact nursing care and encourage end-of-life care involvement by other health care providers, and how hope can be nurtured for the dying. The penultimate part of the book provides insight into CARES tool application strategies employed at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada. The last part summarizes the example scenario of an individual final journey and the individualized care he and his family were given in an effort to provide a peaceful and loving death. It also provides some recommended websites, readings, and references to continue the reader’s education on evidence-based compassionate care of the dying.

This book delivers a wealth of practical tools for incorporating spirituality into nursing. There are numerous articles on the concepts of spirituality and religion in nursing practice, including the nursing role in spiritual assessment, spiritual nursing diagnoses, spiritual care in various nursing contexts, and many more. Spirituality is a focus for debate and discussion within the nursing profession, and it is appropriate to consider this concept as it has captured the nursing world. The book discusses an interrelationship between resilience and holistic health. It also discusses challenges to incorporating spirituality into nursing practice. Although there is ample rationale for the inclusion of spirituality into nursing practice, education, and research, there are also challenges to such inclusion. Some would identify these challenges as “barriers”, but the word “challenges” seems to have more potential for positive action with respect to exploring each challenge and ways to overcome it. In order to appropriately incorporate spiritual assessment and care into practice, nurses need the requisite professional competency. Competencies are integral to nursing practice and usually accompany standards of practice. Standards for educating nurses about spiritual care are present in both educational and practice contexts in that they are part of the accreditation criteria for institutions. The book also focuses on spiritual assessment and spiritual care within the context of mental health care/mental health nursing and spirituality in palliative and hospice care.

This book details the technical aspects of how to achieve requirements for clinical treatment planning aspects, including patient positioning, creation of patient specific bolus, beam angle configurations, and inverse planning optimization approaches. It is written for everyone involved in treatment planning including dosimetrists, physicists, and physicians. The book comprises of 14 chapters. The first three chapters are introductory chapters. Chapter one describes the types of treatment plans and the general process of treatment planning. The second chapter explains the principles and limitations of current inverse planning optimization algorithms, and discusses the application of auto-planning, knowledge-based planning, and multi-criteria optimization to overcome these limitations. The third chapter covers the available immobilization equipment and general principles of simulation, including patient safety procedures. Chapters four through eleven are organized by body site or system and covers central nervous system, head and neck, breast cancer, thoracic cancer, gastrointestinal radiotherapy, genitourinary cancer, gynecologic cancer, lymphoma, and soft tissue sarcoma. For each site, there is a description of patient simulation, including immobilization, setup, isocenter placement, and any special considerations such as motion management. The plan goals for each treatment site are tabulated, followed by recipes to achieve them from the simplest planning technique to the most advanced planning technique. For simple 3D conformal plans, the recipes include the field arrangement and portal shape design (both with many figures), beam weighting, and selection of dose normalization point. For advanced techniques such as intensity-modulated radiation therapy, volumetric modulated radiation therapy, and stereotactic body radiation therapy, the recipes provide details of creation of optimization structures and multiple stage optimizations. Each chapter concludes with plan evaluation, comparing achieved doses to the clinical planning goals. Chapter thirteen describes treatment planning for pediatric cancers. Chapter fourteen discusses treatment planning for palliative treatment.

Palliative care is considered a subspecialty of medicine and nursing, with certifications offered to insure the highest quality of care that can be offered to those with acute, chronic, progressive, life-altering, or life-threatening diseases. Palliative and hospice care are on the same continuum. Hospice care is offered in the last 6 months of life, whereas palliative care is offered earlier, at the time of diagnosis, with any diagnosis that can eventually lead to death. This book gives palliative care and hospice nurses the advanced knowledge they need, beyond their undergraduate and graduate nursing education, to incorporate advanced empirical, aesthetic, ethical, and personal knowledge into their nursing practice. The book is organized into four sections comprising 27 chapters. Section I articulates the purpose and value of palliative care and hospice nursing and the revolution across America and the world, which demands the relief of suffering and every effort to promote quality of life until its end. Section II emphasizes on the care for the whole person and family. The chapters on culture and spirituality, and sexuality will help to recognize that a person is more than a physical body. The art of communication, the promotion of health, and holistic therapies are also taught. Section III focuses on advancing one’s knowledge of life-threatening diseases such as cancer, end-stage heart disease, end-stage heart disease, end-stage renal disease, end-stage liver disease, chronic lung disease, neurological disorders, HIV/AIDS. Section IV deals with effective management of symptoms such as dyspnea, anxiety, depression, delirium, posttraumatic stress disorders, gastrointestinal symptoms, fatigue, and skin alterations by pharmacologic, nonpharmacologic, and complementary therapies. In the peri-death chapter, nurses will learn how their presence at the deathbed can imprint a memory that replaces fear with calm, suffering with relief, and sorrow with abundant appreciation and love.

Effective health communication is the result of a complex process that begins with understanding the theories related to various interdependent and interrelated communication disciplines. This book is intended to serve as a source of information, primarily as a stimulant for interaction, exploration, application, reflection, and self–assessment. To assist the reader in better assimilating and utilizing these disciplines, each chapter provides real and/or hypothetical examples that can be assessed and analyzed. The first chapter is an introduction and is followed by a chapter on health care pedagogy, which explores all aspects of American health care and its impact on a wide variety of health communication contexts and audiences. Another chapter focuses on interpersonal and gendered communication which is important to interpersonal relationship development and maintenance. Provider–patient communication is interpersonal, and differences in cultures potentially impact provider–patient communication. Ethical communication in clinical practice is critical to informed and collaborative decision making and enhances provider–patient interpersonal relationships. Leadership communication theories help the health care providers to understand and potentially apply in their various roles, situations, and/or teams. The book also discusses risk management vis–à–vis effective verbal, nonverbal, written communication policies, palliative care and end–of–life communication.

This book covers all dimensions of palliative care but with a special emphasis on primary palliative care. The book is organized into three parts comprising twenty two chapters. Part one provides the essential background and principles of supportive oncology and palliative care, including chapters on understanding the adult and pediatric patient and family illness experience, the roles and responsibilities of the palliative care team, and the art of the palliative care assessment interview. Part two covers symptom management and includes ten chapters considering the major physical and psychosocial symptoms a cancer patient may face—neurologic, cardiac, respiratory, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, psychiatric, sleep and fatigue, pain, and psychosocial and spiritual distress. Part three addresses special considerations and issues that an oncologist, physician, nurse or other healthcare provider often face in these settings, including chapters on intimacy, sexuality, and fertility issues, grief and bereavement, running a family meeting, care for the caregiver, and survivorship.

The book examines various theories of aging including a contrast between the strengths-based person-in-environment theory and the pathologically based medical model of psychological problems. It advocates truly engaging with the older client during the assessment phase, and discusses a variety of intervention modalities. The book integrates an advanced clinical social work practice with in-depth knowledge of evidence-based practice as well as geriatric medicine, psychiatry and gerontology. The social worker must evaluate the status of the client’s housing, transportation, food, clothing, recreation opportunities, social supports, access to medical care, kinship and other factors considered important by the social worker or the client. Constructivist theory is a conceptual framework that is foundational to existential therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and narrative therapy, which are effective for older adults. Stigma associated with race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation produce psychosocial stressors that converge on older clients. The book discusses several medical conditions affecting older adults such as Alzheimer’s disease, arthritic pain, diabetes and various types of cancers. Older adults may also suffer from substance abuse-related problems, hypersexuality, and various types of abuse such as neglect. The book also highlights the problems faced by the older adult LGBT community and those suffering from HIV disease. It ends with discussions on care and residential settings for the older adults, and palliative care and euthanasia.

Social work has a long-standing commitment to healthcare and the recognition of the inextricable link to quality of life and well-being across the lifespan. This book emphasizes the critical importance of health for all members of society and the significant role of social work in the field. It presents essential information about health and social work critical to understanding today’s complex health care systems and policies. The book is intended as a core text for masters of social work (MSW) and advanced bachelor of social work (BSW) courses on health and social work, social work and health care, health and wellness, social work practice in health care, and integrative behavioral health taught in social work, public health, and gerontology. The book is organized into three parts containing 18 chapters. The first chapter describes the role of social work in healthcare. The second chapter discusses ethics and values in healthcare social work. The next three chapters present social determinants of health, intersectionality, and social work assessment. Chapter six discusses health promotion and public health. Chapter seven presents integrated behavioral healthcare. Chapter eight describes substance misuse, abuse, and substance-related disorders. Chapters nine and ten discuss palliative care, end-of-life care, correctional healthcare, and psychosocial care. Chapter 11 describes children and family health. Chapter 12 explores healthcare and work with older adults and their caregivers. Chapters 13 to 15 delve on immigrants and refugee health, health and HIV/AIDS, and LGBTQ health. Chapters 16 and 17 describe healthcare and disability, and healthcare and serving veterans. The final chapter discusses future direction of healthcare and social work.

This book provides clinicians from multiple disciplines the opportunity to examine key topics that can be practically considered for implementation into practice. It provides information from a wide variety of viewpoints that will enable individual team members to forge interdisciplinary approaches to care, assess current programs, develop strategies to improve the quality of care, and tailor new models of care for patients in need of palliative care services. The book spans all aspects of the clinical and compassionate care of patients, families, and caregivers. Written by experts from all clinical disciplines, including medical and surgical physicians, mental health professionals, nurses, therapists, and chaplains, it shows great respect for and gives voice to affected families and their babies. It addresses the multidimensional aspects of perinatal and neonatal palliative care. Encompassing the perspectives of neonatologists, maternal-fetal medicine and other physicians, neonatal and perinatal nurse practitioners, midwives, nurses in all sectors of perinatal care, and child life specialists, chaplains, social workers, genetic counselors, lactation consultants, and others, the book underscores the unique aspects of perinatal and neonatal palliative care, with a focus on improving quality of life, as well as comfort at the end of life. It describes healthcare for neonates and pregnant mothers, care and support of the family, planning and decision making, and effective support for grief and bereavement. It addresses all palliative and neonatal palliative care settings, including home care, and covers elements of comfort care, such as pain medication and oxygen. The book focuses on the prenatal period after diagnosis of the expected baby’s life-threatening condition. These include such topics as care of the mother, delivering devastating news, and advance care planning.