Psychosocial Care

Caregiver Burden Can Happen to Nurses, Too

Oncol­ogy nurs­ing, with its inten­sity of demands and rewards, puts us at risk for care­giver strain, bur­den, and burnout. The idea of con­sid­er­ing our own needs first can seem just wrong to nurses. Yet self-​​care is cru­cial and includes more than mak­ing healthy lifestyle choices.

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Addressing Psychosocial Needs in Palliative Care

Patients in hos­pice desire to be kept clean and free of pain, anx­i­ety, and short­ness of breath. They wish to have health­care pro­fes­sion­als who know them as a whole per­son, who will lis­ten to their needs and be hon­est about their con­di­tion, and with whom they feel com­fort and trust. They want to main­tain their dig­nity and sense of humor, get finances in order, name a deci­sion maker, and say good­bye to impor­tant people.

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Roles of Psychiatric and Mental Health APNs

With the cur­rent empha­sis on the impor­tance of inte­grat­ing psy­choso­cial assess­ment and inter­ven­tion into oncol­ogy care, some facil­i­ties are turn­ing to a dif­fer­ent advanced prac­tice nurse (APN) for assis­tance with psy­choso­cial oncol­ogy care.

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Manage Anxiety and Depression in Patients and Nurses

Anx­i­ety and depres­sion are terms fre­quently used to describe emo­tions in peo­ple with seri­ous ill­nesses. Nurses may eas­ily rec­og­nize a flat affect or a behav­ior change from out­go­ing to with­drawn. But when do these symp­toms become psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders in need of treat­ment and/​or psy­chotropic medications?

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Screening for Distress in Patients With Cancer

Many tools are used in clin­i­cal prac­tice and research to mea­sure anx­i­ety, depres­sion, and other psy­chi­atric issues, but one of the eas­i­est tools to use is the Dis­tress Ther­mome­ter from the National Com­pre­hen­sive Can­cer Net­work. Nurses and other health­care providers such as social work­ers and coun­selors can work together to develop a pilot pro­gram to learn how to best incor­po­rate the tool into their prac­tice setting.

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