The Last Mile of the Way

It's a fact that hospice and palliative care are consistently underused by people of color. Many reasons account for this discrepancy, including lack of access, socioeconomic factors, and cultural influences. Transcultural nursing addresses these cultural aspects of nursing, offering compassionate, effective, and culturally relevant care to patients. This is especially important in end-of-life care.

In The Last Mile of the Way, author Theresita (Tacy) Silverberg-Urian,...
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It's a fact that hospice and palliative care are consistently underused by people of color. Many reasons account for this discrepancy, including lack of access, socioeconomic factors, and cultural influences. Transcultural nursing addresses these cultural aspects of nursing, offering compassionate, effective, and culturally relevant care to patients. This is especially important in end-of-life care.

In The Last Mile of the Way, author Theresita (Tacy) Silverberg-Urian, RN, BSN, CHPN, presents ten interviews with multicultural nurses who care for the terminally ill. Through these nurses' stories, the impact that providers of color have in hospice settings becomes obvious, as does the role sensitivity plays in regard to each patient's ethnic and cultural background.

Silverberg-Urian and her colleagues represent a mixture of first, second, and third generation Americans from multiple different countries and religions. But all share a sense of mission: to provide maximum comfort to patients in their care. All possess a "hospice heart."

While most works on transcultural nursing focus solely on the patient-the most important person in the equation-The Last Mile of the Way goes one step further, examining the influence ethnicity, religion, values, beliefs, and cultural competency has on both patient and caregiver.

Silverberg-Urian defines her own "good culturally competent death" where talking about death and dying with her family and providers is the norm. She provides helpful internet resources and various transcultural nursing books to reference.