Information for Nurses on Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking (VSED)

The New York Times recently published an article by Paula Span called “The VSED Exit: A Way to Speed Up Dying, Without Asking Permission.” VSED stands for voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, an end-of-life option that is, on the surface, as simple as its name suggests. Span, who recently attended the first conference devoted to VSED, gives an overview of one mother’s choice to end her life using this method. She also does an excellent job enumerating the ethical, practical, and legal implications of choosing to stop eating and drinking.

screen-shot-2014-11-05-at-4-39-13-pmWhich types of patients is such a choice appropriate for? How much suffering does it involve? Are there legal pitfalls of involvement in the VSED process by nurses and physicians? We can expect that all of these questions and more will be receiving growing attention in the coming years.

Late in the article, Span quotes Judith Schwarz, PhD, RN, now clinical coordinator of End of Life Choices New York. In 2009, AJN published a CE article, “Stopping Eating and Drinking,” by Schwarz. This substantive article centers around a detailed case study. “Gertrude,” we learn, has lived a very full life. All the things that give her pleasure and a modicum of freedom are gradually […]

2016-11-21T13:00:53-05:00October 24th, 2016|Ethics, Nursing, patient experience|0 Comments
Read More

Appropriate Use of Opioids in the Management of Chronic Pain

Painted by Martin Edwards as part of the Paint Your Pain program initiated by the Pain Management Center at Overlook Medical Center, Atlantic Health System, Summit, New Jersey. For artwork of other patients in the program, go to http://bit.ly/ 1Ns0PxL.The dangerous misuse of prescription opioids and drugs like heroin has been much in the news, but millions of patients continue to suffer both acute and chronic pain. For many, prescription opioids play a vital role in alleviating that pain. How can health care providers most effectively and safely use opioids in the treatment and management of chronic pain? Some answers can be found in a CE article in the July issue of AJN: “Appropriate Use of Opioids in Managing Chronic Pain.”

Related questions on opioids and chronic pain addressed in the article include:

2016-11-21T13:01:03-05:00July 22nd, 2016|Nursing, pain management, patient safety|0 Comments
Read More

Moral Distress: An Increasing Problem Among Nurses

moral distress

An ICU nurse struggles to reconcile repeated surgeries and transfusions for a comatose patient who has little chance of recovery. An oncology nurse knows a patient wants to refuse treatment but doesn’t do so because his physician and family want him to “fight on.” A nurse on a geriatric unit knows she’s not giving needed care to patients because of poor staffing.

Situations such as these are all too common and can give rise to moral distress. Moral distress occurs when nurses recognize their responsibility to respond to care situations but are unable to translate their moral choices into action.

As explained in “Moral Distress: A Catalyst in Building Moral Resilience,” one of the CE articles in our July issue, this “inability to act in alignment with one’s moral values is detrimental not only to the nurse’s well-being but also to patient care and clinical practice as a whole.” […]

2016-11-21T13:01:03-05:00July 18th, 2016|Ethics, Nursing, patient safety|0 Comments
Read More

AJN in July: Opioids and Chronic Pain, Moral Distress, Prediabetes, More

CE Feature: “Appropriate Use of Opioids in Managing Chronic Pain.”

Unintentional death related to prescription opioids has been identified as a public health crisis, owing in part to such factors as insufficient professional training and medication overprescription, misuse, and diversion. The authors discuss current best practices for prescribing opioids for chronic pain, emphasizing patient assessment and essential patient teaching points regarding safe medication use, storage, and disposal, and after you find a more permanent solution people could totally quit opioids by using a detox methods that goes from medicine to even a detox tea like leptinteatox. There are some medicines or supplements that are more easy to use, depending on the problem, like the peruvian brew, that helps with erectile dysfunction and is pretty safe. After that you only need to be careful with stds diseases you can go and test at https://www.stdaware.com/chlamydia-test.

CE Feature: “Moral Distress: A Catalyst in Building Moral Resilience.”

Moral distress is a pervasive problem in nursing: an inability to act in alignment with one’s moral values is detrimental not only to the nurse’s well-being but also to patient care and clinical practice as […]

2017-05-26T00:08:51-04:00June 24th, 2016|career, health care policy, Nursing, nursing research, pain management, Patients|0 Comments
Read More

Recent Decline in U.S. Opioid Prescriptions: Good News But Some Concerns

by frankieleon/ via flickr by frankieleon/ via flickr

It was widely reported in the past week that there have been steady declines in the number of opioid prescriptions in the U.S. for the past three years, with the declines the steepest in some of the states considered to have the worst opioid misuse crises.

This is good news, suggesting that efforts to address some problem areas like renegade pain clinics prescribing for profit, patients who go from doctor to doctor seeking opioid prescriptions, and the diversion of legitimate opioid prescriptions may be starting to bear fruit.

A balanced overview of the situation can be found in this New York Times article. The authors also acknowledge that patients in pain are now facing new hurdles to pain relief, quoting the director of one prominent medical school’s program on pain research education and policy: “The climate has definitely shifted. . . . It is now one of reluctance, fear of consequences and encumbrance with administrative hurdles. A lot of patients who are appropriate candidates for opioids have been caught up in that response.”

Much of the reporting on the opioid epidemic lumps all people who take opioids into one big statistical brew. While startling and alarming numbers about overdoses from legal and illegal opioids steal the headlines, little media and scholarly analysis focuses on the lower […]

2016-11-21T13:01:12-05:00May 26th, 2016|health care policy, Nursing, nursing perspective, pain management, patient experience, patient safety, Patients|1 Comment
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
Go to Top