Understanding Huntington's disease: an overview of symptomatology and nursing care. Nurses must balance safety, quality-of-life issues, the need for personal choice, and the meaning of human dignity when caring for patients with Huntington's disease.
Patients and families who have been affected by HD deserve high-quality and dignified nursing care. The complexity and extent of losses and uncertainties imposed by this illness challenge nursing. We have briefly reviewed the current state of knowledge regarding the illness and the nursing interventions appropriate for working with people with HD. What is missing is an empirically validated body of interventions to guide nursing practice. Nursing research is needed to validate existing care practices, generate new interventions, and to begin to build theoretical explanations that assist nurses in providing care to people with Huntington's disease.
Kovach
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CR
Stearns
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SA
D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000451:nursing* / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged