• to provide relief from pain and other distressing symptoms;
• to provide psychological and spiritual care; and
• to provide support for the family during the illness and the grieving period that follows.
Pain and Symptom Relief ( See Controlling Pain ) Individuals with advancing disease can experience a variety of symptoms, depending on the specific type of disease. The most common symptoms include pain, loss of appetite, fatigue, weakness, weight loss, constipation, difficulty breathing, confusion, nausea, vomiting, cough, and dry or sore mouth.
The nurses and doctors may try several approaches to find the most appropriate way to achieve comfort. It is important that both patient and family members keep a close eye on the symptoms a person is experiencing, and note whether a particular approach is helpful. If the approach is not effective, another should be tried quickly and the search continued until comfort is achieved.
One of the most commonly experienced symptoms, pain, no matter how chronic or severe, can almost always be controlled without harmful side effects. By using a variety of medications, nurses and doctors work to discover the "tailor-made" plan to relieve pain. Several different approaches may need to be tried. Each patient may have pain for different reasons and respond to pain differently.
