Potential Effects of Environmental Factors on the Recommended Policy Changes
Privacy is an environmental factor that might undermine the effectiveness of the recommended policy changes. Maintaining confidentiality in multi-bed patient rooms is impossible. Hospice care facilities use curtains to separate rooms allowing families and other patients to hear other patient’s dying wishes or patients grieve. Patients in end-of-life care units are also subjected to undue stress when compelled to overhear deaths and resuscitation attempts of their fellow patients (Zadeh et al., 2017). Such destructions aggravate pain. However, the facility can exploit other strategies that can help relieve patient pain, such as enhancing the brightness of the patient’s rooms and engaging them with nature. Visual access to music, artwork, and color distract patients from pain because of their distractive and positive sensory stimulation.
Organizational Resources that Could Affect the Recommended Strategies
Staffing and financing will affect the proposed change strategies. Kindred Healthcare nurses and allied health professionals will be responsible for addressing hospice care patients’ pain and its associated symptoms. They must be encouraged to work as a team to facilitate effective management of the patients at end-of-life care. The hospital administration must fund the caregivers’ training program to improve their competence in meeting the emotional, spiritual, and medical needs of their patients. Their active involvement in taking care of hospice patients will minimize the need for additional staff.
References
- Berry, L.L., Connor, S.R., and Stuart, B.(2017). Practical ideas for improving the quality of hospice care. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 20(5), 449-452. https://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2017.0016
- LaValley, S.A.(2018). End-of-life caregiver social support activation: The roles of hospice clinicians and professionals. Qualitative Health Research, 28(1), 87-97