A new paradigm for end of life care
A recent report from seven charities estimated 48,000 people who died last year experienced poor care when dying. In her new book, The Bell Lap, author Muriel Murch lays the ground for caregivers to reach beyond the confines of the settings of illness, whether home, hospital, or long-term care and become active and involved participants in the world of the patient.
Just published, The Bell Lap: Stories for Compassionate Nursing Care by Muriel Murch offers a compelling new paradigm; learning the singular stories of our patients, along with the lives they still lead are necessary components for compassionate and quality end of life care.
bell lap n.
The final lap of a race, as at a track meet, signalled by the ringing of a bell as the leader begins the last lap.
Stories in The Bell Lap share some of the life-changes that come with age and illness. Bell Lap moments are recognizable to families who find themselves caring for their loved ones, as well as to the professionals caring for their patients.
Some stories are songs of jubilation, holding moments of courage, or of cunning, still others of acceptance and death, others in the realization of life’s newly opened paths. All of us with families and with patients already know something of these stories.
The Bell Lap allows us all - students, families and caregivers - to discover who our patients are, and have been, and what we need to do to provide optimum care, comfort and - maybe - safety in this new reality. It is in caring, even as untrained family members, and to different degrees, that we all practice the art of nursing.
At some point in life’s journey each of us enters our Bell Lap. How does it happen? Do we recognize it when it does happen? How do we accept or kick against it? Or, as in Graham’s own words in the Prologue, how do we face, for ourselves and those we love, the two somewhat but not entirely compatible tasks: living longer and dying well.
While some of the stories are about patients, others focus on the caregivers - those coping with loved ones and off times left behind. They connect families, communities, doctors, nurses and caregivers as they work together. They seek out where compassion and empathy for the patient is to be found within the various medical systems and communities, bringing the grace and safely we all long for.
As the economic pressures of the health care systems in the western world bear down on the providers, those pressures are threatening the arts of nursing and medicine. Physicians may come and go, moving quickly on from the bedside. With luck however, it will be a nurse who watches over you, soothes and succours you, guiding you back to life or beyond.
Muriel A. Murch, BSN, was born and grew up in England, where she graduated as a nurse in 1964. In 1965, she married Walter Murch in New York City and they motorcycled to Los Angeles, California, relocating to the Bay Area in 1969. Muriel added a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from San Francisco State University in 1991 from whence came Journey in the Middle of the Road: One Woman’s Journey through a Mid-Life Education, first published by Sybil Press in 1995. Her short stories and poetry are included in several university press anthologies and online journals focused on the writings of nurses and women’s health.
The Bell Lap: Stories for Compassionate Nursing Care
Muriel Murch
www.crcpress.com/9781785231605
Published March 2016 by CRC Press
155 Pages - ISBN 9781785231605 - £16.99
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