Final answer:
During the denial stage of a client's psychosocial adaptation to illness, especially in response to a cancer diagnosis, the nurse should offer support, recognizing it as a natural initial reaction based on the five stages of grief proposed by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross.
Step-by-step explanation:
During the denial stage of the client's psychosocial adaptation to illness, the nurse should support the client and explain that this is an expected reaction to a cancer diagnosis. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, in her groundbreaking work 'On Death and Dying', described the process of an individual accepting their own death through five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Initially, a person may not want to believe they are dying. This denial is a common defense mechanism to cope with overwhelming emotions.
Following denial, individuals may experience anger, feeling that their impending loss of life is unfair and unjust. The third stage is bargaining, where an attempt is made to negotiate for more time or a different fate, often through reform or promises of change. The fourth stage, depression, allows individuals to begin to understand the certainty of their situation, potentially leading to feelings of hopelessness. Finally, in the acceptance stage, individuals make peace with their mortality, often resulting in a more measured perspective on the time they have left.
The correct order of stages in Kübler-Ross's five-stage model of grief is denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.