Book Review

The Oxford Textbook of Palliative Nursing is one of the most comprehensive books on palliative care nursing available. It addresses the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs that is important to the successful palliative care team. In addition, it addresses principles of care from the time of serious illness diagnosis to the end of a patient’s life and even beyond.

The book is divided into 7 sections. Each chapter is enriched with tables and figures, examples for improving learning, and a strong evidence-based practice to support the highest possible quality of care.

The first section provides an overview about general principles of palliative care. It sheds light on the national consensus project for quality palliative care, hospital-based palliative care, principles of patient, and family assessment, communication in palliative care and finally; advanced care planning.

The second section deals with symptoms assessment and management. It covers 29 subtopics such as: starting with the interdisplinary palliative care team then go through different serious diseases and end with the complementary and integrative therapies in palliative care.

The third section discusses the psychosocial and spiritual support with 7 subtopics including the meaning of hope in dying, bereavement, supporting families and family care giver in palliative care, planning for actual death, spiritual screening, spiritual care intervention and meaning of illness.

The fourth section focuses on special patient population such as poor undeserved population, substance abuser at their end of life, mentally-ill patients and organ donation.

The fifth section provides an overview about end of life care across settings. It gives idea about improving the quality of nursing care across all settings such as nursing homes, outpatient units and emergency departments.

The sixth section discusses the pediatric palliative care focusing on symptoms management, pediatric hospice care, end-of-life decision making in pediatric oncology, the pediatric intensive care unit, supporting adolescents with parents in hospice and using social media as a communication tool for people with serious illness.

The last section addresses special issues for nurses in end of life care. It explains issues like ethical consideration in palliative care, request for assisting in dying, conceptual model, nursing research, nursing education and the ethos of palliative nursing.

This book moves the field of palliative nursing care a very big step forward as this specialty has become one of the critical nursing specialties.

I enjoyed reading this book. Its audience would be nursing students, nurses, hospice agencies, palliative care programs, all settings and all clinicians caring for the seriously ill patients.