"Amid the stress of acute hospitalization, palliative care intervention affords patients and families physical and non-physical symptom management, quality of life, dignity, and a voice in their plan of care. And who better to initiate such interventions than the nurse at the bedside. Unfortunately, this scenario is all too often the exception, not the norm. Most nurses have limited palliative knowledge and skills but are being asked to address the complex palliative care needs of patients with advanced or serious illness/injury and their families in acute care settings. This is due to increased chronic/advanced illness; COVID-19; insufficient community- based palliative care resources; and inconsistent, insufficient, or complete lack of specialty palliative care teams in inpatient settings. This manual is timely because nursing organizations (American Nurses Association, American Association of Colleges of Nursing, Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association, American Association of Critical Care Nurses) are urgently calling for a primary palliative care knowledge and skill set to be used in all nursing settings. COVID- 19 has accentuated the need for palliative care in acute care units by exposing the knowledge deficit in nurses working in this setting. This gap is compounded by limited palliative care curriculum in nursing schools, insufficient continuing education in hospitals, and a lack of formal palliative care teams (Andersson, Salickiene, & Rosengren, 2016; Deravin Malone, Anderson, & Croxon, 2016; Hao et al.

, 2021; Killmurray, 2019; Kim & Hwang, 2014; Parker, 2019; Stephenson, 2015). Recent research, nursing and healthcare organizations, and even mainstream media sources have identified the multitude of challenges facing nurses in providing quality palliative care, such as strained communication with patients, family visitation limitations, communication barriers between clinicians and families, rapid changes in palliative care medical management, inadequate community care options, lack of testing in community based settings, and guardianship and legal issues (Fox et al., 2016; Kamal et al., 2021; Sheridan, 2022; Stone, 2020; Strang et al., 2014; University of Gothenburg, 2014). This guide will address these challenges and more. single column, 235x187mm, Muli, 50,000 words, 50 figures, 80 tables, 176 pages, 4c"-- Provided by publisher.