Glossary words Flashcards
Acupuncture
a system of complementary medicine that involves pricking the skin or tissues with needles, used to alleviate pain and to treat various physical, mental, and emotional conditions. Originating in ancient China, acupuncture is now widely practiced in the West.
Access the qi through specific points along the energy meridians of the body
Analgesic
relieving pain; drug that relieves pain
Endorphins
Hormones that act on the mind such as morphine and opiates and produce a sense of well-being and reducing pain.
Acute Pain
Pain that follows acute injury, disease, or surgical intervention and had a rapid onset; varies in intensity and lasts for a brief time, usually less than 6 months
Chronic Pain
A pain that persists beyond the period of healing (usually over 6 months), ceases to serve a protective function, degrades patient function, and has no adaptive purpose.
Cordotomy
Cordotomy is a surgical procedure that disables selected pain-conducting tracts in the spinal cord, in order to achieve loss of pain and temperature perception. …
Counterirritant
something such as heat or an ointment that is used to produce surface irritation of the skin, thereby counteracting underlying pain or discomfort.
Cutaneous stimulation
a nursing intervention from the Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC) defined as stimulation of the skin and underlying tissues for the purpose of decreasing undesirable signs and symptoms such as pain, muscle spasm, or inflammation
Enkephalins
either of two compounds that occur naturally in the brain. They are peptides related to the endorphins, with similar physiological effects.
Guided imagery
Method of pain control in which the patient creates a mental image, concentrates in that image, and gradually becomes less aware of pain.
Hypnosis
the induction of a state of consciousness in which a person apparently loses the power of voluntary action and is highly responsive to suggestion or direction. Its use in therapy, typically to recover suppressed memories or to allow modification of behavior by suggestion, has been revived but is still controversial.
Intractable pain
Intense, usually chronic and unremitting, pain for which no accepted medical intervention has provided relief
Local anesthesia
A loss of sensation at the desired site of action
Narcotic
A drug substance, either derived from opium or produced synthetically, that alters perception of pain and that with repeated use may result in physical and psychological dependence
Nerve block
the production of insensibility in a part of the body by injecting an anesthetic close to the nerves that supply it.
Neurectomy
surgical removal of all or part of a nerve.
Neurotransmitters
A chemical that transfers an electrical impulse from the nerve fiber to the muscle fiber
Pain
Subjective, unpleasant sensation caused by noxious stimulation of sensory nerve endings
Patient controlled analgesia PCA
Patient-controlled analgesia is any method of allowing a person in pain to administer their own pain relief. The infusion is programmable by the prescriber. If it is programmed and functioning as intended, the machine is unlikely to deliver an overdose of medication.
Perception
Peoples mental image or concept of elements in their environment, including information gained through the senses
Phantom Pain
Phantom pain sensations are described as perceptions that an individual experiences relating to a limb or an organ that is not physically part of the body. Limb loss is a result of either removal by amputation or congenital limb deficiency.
Placebo
Dosage form that contains no pharmacologically active ingredients but may relieve pain through psychological effects
Radiating pain
Pain spreading from a focus or point of origin. Example: pain in the back can also spread/radiate into the legs.
Reaction
Component of the pain experiences that may include both physiological responses such as in the general adaptation syndrome and behavioral responses
Reception
Neurophysiological components of the pain experience in which nervous system receptors receive painful stimuli and transmit them through peripheral nerves to the spinal cord and brain
Referred Pain
pain felt in a part of the body other than its actual source.
Relaxation
Act of being relaxed or less tense
Remission
Partial or complete disappearances of the clinical and subjective characteristics of chronic or malignant disease; remission may be spontaneous or the result of therapy
Rhizatomy
surgical procedure in which spinal nerve roots are cut; done (anterior roots) to relieve intractable pain or (posterior roots) to stop severe muscle spasms
Somatic pain
Pain arising from tissues such as skin, muscle, tendon, joint capsules, fasciae, and bone.
Sympathectomy
he surgical cutting of a sympathetic nerve or removal of a ganglion to relieve a condition affected by its stimulation.
Threshold
Point at which a person first perceives a painful stimulus as being painful
Tolerance
Point at which a person is not willing to accept pain of greater severity or duration
(TENS) Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation
Technique in which a battery-powered device blocks pain impulses from reaching the spinal cord by delivering weak electrical impulses directly to the surface of the skin
Visceral pain
Visceral pain is pain that results from the the activation of nociceptors of the thoracic, pelvic, or abdominal viscera
Acculturation
Process of adapting to and adopting a new culture
Assimilation
To become absorbed into another culture and adopt its characteristics
Cultural care accommodation or negotiation
Adapting or negotiating with the patient/families to achieve beneficial or satisfying health outcomes
Cultural care preservation or maintenance
Retaining and/or preserving relevant care values so patients are able to maintain their well-being, recover form illness, or face handicaps and/or death
Cultural care repatterning or restructuring
Reordering, changing, or greatly modifying a patients/family’s customs for a new, different, and beneficial health care pattern
Cultural pain
Feeling that a patient has after a health care worker disregards the patient’s valued way of life
Culturally congruent care
Care that fits people’s valued life patterns and sets of meanings generated from the people themselves. Sometimes this differs from the professionals’ perspective on care
Culture
Integrated patterns of human behavior that include the language, thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions or racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups.
Culture-bound syndrome
Illnesses restricted to a particular culture or group because of its psychosocial characteristics
Enculturation
Socialization into ones primary culture as a child
Ethnicity
Shared identity to social and cultural heritage such as values, language, geographical space, and racial characteristics
Ethnocentrism
Tendency to hold one’s own way of life as superior to that of others
Ethnohistory
The branch of anthropology concerned with the history of people and cultures esp. Non- western ones
Internalizing system
Are found in modern societies with highly scientific and technological capacities to examine biological causes of health and illness
Ex) western biomedical system
Invisible culture
Less observable
Values, morals, beliefs
Naturalistic practitioners
Western culture
Attribute illness to natural, impersonal and biological forces that cause alteration in the equilibrium of the human body
* healing emphasizes naturalistic modalities such as chemicals, heat, cold, massage, surgery
Personalistic practitioners
Non–western culture
Believe that health and illness can be caused by the active influence of an external agent which can be human (sorcerer) or nonhuman ( God-devil)
Rites of passage
a ceremony or event marking an important stage in someone’s life, esp. birth, puberty, marriage, and death.
Subcultures
Various ethnic, religious, and other groups with distinct characteristics from the dominant culture
Transcultural nursing
Distinct discipline developed by Leininger that focuses on the comparative study of cultures to understand similarities and differences among groups of people
Visible culture
Easily seen or observed
Ex) customs, rituals, language, appearance
Algor Mortis
Algor mortis is the reduction in body temperature following death. This is generally a steady decline until matching ambient temperature, although external factors can have a significant influence.
Anticipatory grief
Grief reponse in which the person begins the grieving process before an actual loss
Autopsy
a postmortem examination to discover the cause of death or the extent of disease
Bereavement
Response to loss through death; subjective experience that a person suffers after losing a person with whom there has been a significant relationship
Cerebral Death
death when respiration and other reflexes are absent; consciousness is gone; organs can be removed for transplantation before the heartbeat stops
Cremate
To incinerate (a corpse).
Death
the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism. Compare brain death.
Dignity
the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.
Embalm
preserve (a corpse) from decay, originally with spices and now usually by arterial injection of a preservative.
Grief
deep sorrow, esp. that caused by someone’s death.
Grieving process
“five stages of grief”, is a hypothesis introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross[1] and says that when a person is faced with the reality of impending death or other extreme, awful fate, he or she will experience a series of emotional stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Hospice
System of family-centered care designed to help terminally ill people be comfortable and maintain a satisfactory lifestyle throughout the terminal phase of their illness
Inhibited grief
Inhibited Grief is a form of unresolved grief where the bereaved person displays no outward signs of normal mourning
Livor mortis
livor—”bluish color,” mortis—”of death”),
Livor mortis is a settling of the blood in the lower (dependent) portion of the body, causing a purplish red discoloration of the skin. When the heart stops functioning and is no longer agitating the blood, heavy red blood cells sink through the serum by action of gravity.
Livor mortis starts twenty minutes to three hours after death and is congealed in the capillaries in four to five hours. Maximum lividity occurs within 6–12 hours
Loss
The absence of an object, person, body part or function, emotion or idea that was formally present.
Mortician
an undertaker
a person whose job is to prepare dead people to be buried and to arrange and manage funerals
Mourning
process of grieving
Palliative
of a treatment or medicine) relieving pain or alleviating a problem without dealing with the underlying cause.
Perceived loss
Loss that is less obvious to the individual experiencing it. Although easily overlooked or misunderstood, a perceived loss results in the same grief process as ab actual loss
Postmortem
an examination of a dead body to determine the cause of death.
Rigor mortis
stiffening of the joints and muscles of a body a few hours after death, usually lasting from one to four days.
Origin
Shroud
a length of cloth or an enveloping garment in which a dead person is wrapped for burial.
Contralateral stimulation
Opposite side
