A Quality of Life Improvement in Dying Patients Utilizing a Nutritional Supplement

A Quality of Life Improvement in Dying Patients Utilizing a Nutritional Supplement Caring for the declining or dying patient at home may be a challenging event for the patient and their family, but when your patient also presents with pressure ulcers, the environment of care becomes more complex. Comfort and pain relief are always paramount in the goals, but the need to provide pressure redistribution, nutritional support and local wound care will certainly add to the components of care. In our agency, we have utilized varying support surfaces and topical wound care measures in our care for patients with pressure ulcers, but we recently added a nutritional supplement to our regimen in an effort to boost their quality of life. Several of these patients had requested no feeding tubes and yet we strived to improve the status of their wounds that would hopefully lead to improved comfort. This poster will describe our experiences providing a nutritional supplement and our patient responses during this time. We found some improvement in the wound status and a resulting improvement in comfort for our patients.