Valoración holística del dolor en pacientes terminales ingresados en el Hospital Universitario Morales Meseguer de Murcia
- Sánchez-Garcia, Ana Belen 1
- Arredondo Sánchez, Ester 3
- Torralba Madrid, Maria José 2
- Navarro Guillamón, Maria Dolores 3
- Guillermo Giménez, Maria de la Paz 4
- 1 Universidad de Murcia Hospital General Universitario Reina Sofía
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2
Universidad de Murcia
info
- 3 Servicio Murciano de Salud-Hospital General Universitario Morales Meseguer de Murcia
- 4 Servicio Murciano de Salud
ISSN: 2386-6594
Year of publication: 2017
Issue Title: Estudios: derecho, salud y ciencias de la vida
Issue: 6
Type: Article
More publications in: Bioderecho.es: revista del Centro de Estudios en Bioderecho, Ética y Salud
Abstract
Pain is a feeling, an unpleasant personal experience, a symptom that alerts us about a potential malfunctioning of our organism. Pain is always subjective: many people complain about pain in the absence of physio pathological reasons that would explain it. That is where the affective, cognitive, and socio-cultural dimensions of pain come into play.Our research work studies terminally ill patients. Any health professional caring for these patients must consider the following objectives: the preservation of the patient’s dignity, the provision of emotional support, and the control of the patient’s symptoms. Among the latter, pain shows an extraordinary prevalence, which is why controlling pain satisfactorily, becomes essential to comply with the aforementioned fundamental objectives.In the present paper we set out to evaluate pain in terminally ill patients. We will analyze it in some aspects of its biological, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions. With that goal in mind, we conducted weekly surveys to a sample of 16 terminally ill patients hospitalized in the Palliative Care Unit in Morales Meseguer Hospital.The results obtained from Lattinen’s test show the need for additional action directed towards the alleviation of pain and the enhancement of the quality of life for terminally ill patients. Multiple studies show the high prevalence and intensity of pain experienced by this kind of patients even in the presence of high intakes of analgesics. In addition to that, the quality of their sleep is often far from adequate. The vast majority of them do not miss any kind of psychological or religious assistance. Finally, almost all of them have relatives that support and assist them throughout their terminal phase.