[Palliative care and end-of-life care: nurse, what are you looking for?]

Palliative care and end-of-life (EOL) care are highly requested in hospital, especially in the Internal Medicine wards, exposed, as they are, to receive elderly, frail patients affected by multiple chronic diseases and limited life expectancy. Within the medical staff, the nurses are specifically responsible to guarantee an appropriate and non-futile standard of care for this kind of patients, oriented to their real requirements and primarily to the relief their symptoms, without disregarding their spiritual needs. The competence in EOL-care should be equally distributed and shared among physicians and nurses in all clinical settings, because every single component should be able to plan its own intervention according to the comfort care concept, and, in the meanwhile, should be able to share decisions in an interdisciplinary manner. This is the only way for clinical pathways to result efficacious as they should be.«Astieniti nelle ultime fasi di vita della persona assistita da procedure invasive, seleziona gli interventi da attuare a garanzia della sua dignità, della sua qualità di vita e della gestione di sintomi, in modo particolare del controllo del dolore».