Strategies for Engaging with the Nursing Staff during the Training Session

The nursing staff spends most of their time with hospice patients and their family members. They will take part in identifying issues that should be addressed in the training session. For instance, they will highlight the challenges they face in their endeavor to manage pain and its related symptoms among hospice patients. Hospice care, according to Powers (2017), must provide patients and their caregivers with support and comfort because death is the only option as their ailments do no react to treatment. However, nurses find it challenging to manage pain resulting in undermined quality of life and impaired functioning. Patients subjected to pain give up because of their inability to commit to fighting their conditions. Therefore, engaging nurses will be crucial in the design of the training program. They will help training experts provide solutions to the challenges they face to improve the quality of life of hospice care patients.

Part 11: Training Agenda

The fear of pain and pain itself determines hospice-care patients’ behaviors and quality of life.  Patients at the end of life care consider freedom from pain crucial in improving their quality of life. Although analgesic measures can alleviate their suffering, patients are always worried that their pain will progress without any efforts to relieve it. Pain predisposes end-of-life care patients to suicide and depression. Therefore, the training agenda is to inform Kindred Hospice nursing staff the importance of carefully assessing and monitoring end-of-life patients and managing their pain and its related suffering. It also focuses on the significance of involving caregivers to reduce the work pressure on nurses.

Training Activities and Materials

The training materials include charts, projectors, instructions, notebooks, pens, computers, and programs to guide the nursing staff on what to consider when managing and controlling pain. The materials will be utilized to provide trainees with guidelines for managing patients and the use of caregivers in prescribing pain medications or non-pharmacological interventions. Using these materials, the trainees will complete multiple tasks. For instance, they will use their notebooks to write down various case studies related to pain management. They will present their findings via PowerPoint. They can also use charts to provide multiple interventions for managing patient pain and related symptoms.   

An Annotated Agenda and Outline for a Two-Hour Training Workshop

        i.            Introducing the nursing staff to the policy change program: The nursing staff will be introduced to what the law says about pain management and the consequences of not managing pain and its associated symptoms among end-of-life care patients

   ii.            Engaging the nursing staff in pain management through the use of case studies: Various case studies will be utilized to provide the nursing staff with an opportunity to apply what they have learned throughout the training session in managing pain among hospice care patients. They will present to other trainees what they think is the most practical strategy to manage patient pain. For instance, they should decide whether the use of pain killers or non-pharmacological interventions is the most compelling in handling the client in the case study

    iii.            Addressing how caregivers can help nurses in managing patients’ pain and its related suffering: Caregivers play an essential role in taking care of end-of-life patients. Their involvement will help reduce nurses’ work pressure. They can assist with prescribing patients with pain medication as per the doctors’ instructions and providing them with spiritual and emotional support (LaValley, 2018). They can also help patients with non-pharmacological pain interventions. The nurses must provide them with adequate training to assist in taking care of their ailing patients. Therefore, the training program will address the need for nurses to train caregivers on what to expect from them when taking care of hospice care patients.