Tag: Comfort and Support in Hospice Care

Issues on Hospice Care

Hospices are medical facilities designed to treat patients who have terminal illnesses. This is where immediate relatives lodge their ailing love ones for further medical attention. A hospice care has a special role in the lives of its patients. Its main goal is to improve the quality of their lives before succumbing to such illnesses. It is a special type of medical care in that a 24/7 monitoring is administered by a nurse or a medical specialist to ensure proper handling of patients. Hospices are like Assisted Living Centers but with minor differences. But hospices do have some issues too, regardless of its use. And there are at least three of them.

Finding the Right Answer
The question whether hospices have the right answers and responses to every patient in need of help is still up for grabs.  This is a relative question, so normally it also has a relative answer. A hospice care, more or less, does not concern itself with finding the right answer. They are instituted to give extra medical help to such patients, and subsequently not to engage in a discussion or debate.

What about Depression?
There are others who choose to receive medical help inside a hospice care than anywhere else, including their homes. Most hospice care patients say that they get depressed while dealing with their illnesses away from any companion. Depression is already prevalent in the US. And those who suffer from it get to have the option of dealing with it with hospice care.

What about Anguish?
Patients are also anguished especially when they are alone and left without any interaction from other people. These patients are in the last stages of their existence, so being anguished comes with the territory. But that is one concern that hospice care is trying to alleviate.

Care for Care (Hospice Care)

People who become sick come to the hospital and get a doctor’s appointment. When something wrong is actually confirmed, they can either choose to stay at the hospital or at home, depending on what agreement the parties involved may have. And when something worse happens, these patients are given care and attention more than regular patients. And finally, when the unthinkable comes, the time when even doctors cannot help but say to pray, who will these people have to turn to?

Hospice care is a palliative care that provides its services to those people who are nearing death. These are usually the ones who are chronically ill and do not have much longer to live. Reputable hospice care providers not only help physically, but also mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. They help both the patient and the family in facing what is happening now, and what is to come. This is what sets them apart from other care services and are widely known for it. Despite that however, hospice care is only optional.

Hospice care is not without its gossiping rumors. People tend to believe that receiving such care might welcome death sooner or it might mean giving up on life. Hospice care is definitely none of those things.

For one, hospice care tries to supervise the patient into embracing the life he or she has as of the moment. The patients in turn becomes aware of a lot of things which include the support and love coming from their family, friends and even care providers. Hospice care is also about respecting the patient’s wishes. They serve as their counterparts’ tubes and medical equipment in the hospitals. And much more, they are provided with an honest service. Hospice care providers are usually on the clock almost every hour of the day to heed the patient’s needs—like counseling and prayer.

Palliative Care and Hospice Care Differences

Palliative care and hospice care are both providers of care for patients with illnesses that are fatal. Two types of care providers to supplement some of the more traditional care options. Their protocols call for patients to receive a combined approach where medications, day-to-day care, equipment, bereavement counseling, and symptoms treatment are administered through a single program. However, no matter how similar palliative care and hospice care are, there are still differences between the two: location, timing, and treatment.

Palliative care is delivered mostly in an institutionalized location, such as a hospital, extended care facility, or nursing home. The institution where palliative care is administered must be associated with the palliative care team because the team is composed of doctors, nurses, and other professional medical caregivers. They will be the ones who will administer or oversee most of the ongoing comfort-care patients received. Meanwhile, hospice care is administered in the home by a team of hospice professionals. Hospice often relies upon the family caregiver, as well as a visiting hospice nurse.

There are no time restrictions for palliative care. The patient can receive palliative care any time, at any stage of the illness, whether it be terminal or not. On the other hand, hospice care is only given to patients who have a certification from a physician that they are terminally ill. Hospice care takes patients whose life expectancy is only six months or less.

Palliative care also administers treatments to patients ranging from conservative to aggressive/curative. Life-prolonging therapies will not be avoided and the palliative care team will do anything and everything to save the patient’s life. Meanwhile, hospice care treatments concentrate on comfort. Curing the patient is no longer the goal. Instead, hospice care makes sure to provide comfort to patients for the remaining days of their lives.

Palliative care and hospice care are very similar when it comes to providing care for dying people.

Considering Hospice Care

We cannot escape the natural process of our body. We know that soon, we will become weak and fragile. Aging is the natural effect of the passage of time on human body. Many of us want to fight our age. Most of us want to spend more time with loved ones, some of us may want to look young, some want to continue to be active and animated, others want to work more. But if our body wants to rest we cannot decline or refuse.

Aside from natural aging, Sickness also is one of the factors why our body is deteriorating. Sickness is may be avoided, but it is also inevitable. We cannot predict when it will strike us, and the worst type of sicknesses are those that take longer to cure, or stays with us forever. These ailments are made easier knowing that we can get hospice care.

Hospice care is a program that we can consider if we need help to lighten up our burden in terms of health problems. This program focuses on the quality rather than length of life. It offers humane and compassionate care for people who are in the last stages of their lives. They treat the person rather than the disease so that the person’s last day may be spent with dignity, comfortably and quality. We think about hospice care if the person is no longer capable of being helped by a medicinal treatment. It aims to improve the quality of our life. It also provides support for the patient’s emotional and spiritual needs.

Therefore, we should sometimes consider hospice care. We should not think that being in the hospice program is a sign of giving up of one’s self. Let us also think the benefits that we can receive from the program. The hope that we can receive from them is the hope of quality life, making the best of each day during the last-stage of our lives. We should be thankful that there are people who offer themselves to help us feel valued and important.

Differences between Palliative and Hospice Care  

Hospice care and Palliative have similarities: both provide care for patients with fatal illnesses. As a supplement to some of the more traditional care options, both palliative and hospice care protocols call for patients to receive a combined approach where medications, day-to-day care, equipment, bereavement counseling, and symptoms treatment are administered through a single program. The differences between the two programs lay in the location, timing, and treatment.

The location where palliative care is delivered is most common in an institution such as a hospital, extended care facility, or nursing home that is associated with a palliative care team. This is because a team of doctors, nurses, and other professional medical caregivers will administer or oversee most of the ongoing comfort-care patients receive. But, palliative care can also be delivered at home.

Meanwhile, hospice care is administered in the home by a team of hospice professionals. Hospice often relies upon the family caregiver, as well as a visiting hospice nurse.

Palliative care can be received by patients any time, at any stage of illness whether it be terminal or not. There are no time restrictions. However, hospice care requires that a physician certify that a patient’s condition is terminal. The patient’s expectancy should be six months or less.

Treatments are not limited with palliative care and there is no expectation that life-prolonging therapies will be avoided. Palliative care treatment can range from conservative to aggressive/curative. While this is the case for palliative care, hospice care treatments, on the other hand, concentrate on comfort. The goal is no longer cure, but to provide comfort to the patient for the remaining days of their lives.

There are differences between palliative care and hospice care. And yet, there is a relationship between the two at the same time. They are very similar when it comes to the most important issue for dying people: care.

Hospice Care and Palliative Care

Palliative Care concentrates on alleviating signs and symptoms that are associated with serious diseases, like cardiac disease, cancer, kidney failure, respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s along with other dementia, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), AIDS along with other neurological conditions.

Palliative Care can be utilized at any kind of stage of illness – not only the sophisticated stages.

Hospice Care is actually palliative in general. The sickness, nevertheless, has advanced to some extent exactly where preventive treatment will no longer be preferred or advantageous. Hospice Care aids the affected individual and their household while keeping focus on relieving signs and symptoms and providing comfort and ease from pain, difficulty breathing, fatigue, queasiness, anxiety, sleep problems, bowel problems, etc.

Remedies are not restricted with Palliative Care and may vary from conventional to aggressive/curative.

Hospice Care remedies are restricted and concentrate on palliation of signs and symptoms. The aim is no longer about cure, but to enhance ease and comfort. Palliative Care can be viewed as anytime during the duration of a long-term ailment.

Using Hospice Care, Medicare insurance necessitates that a doctor approve or certify that a patient’s situation is fatal. The doctor must prove that a patient’s life span is 6 months or fewer. Each Palliative and also Hospice Care might be provided at any location.

Variations in Forms of Services:

Palliative Care services are usually supplied through frequent physician and also nursing visits.

Hospice Care companies tend to be more inclusive than Palliative Care services. Hospice Care consists of doctor services, medical services, social worker, religious care, bereavement care and also volunteers. In some instances, physical, speech, occupational, as well as dietary therapy expert services, and guidance services are considered essential during the Hospice Holistic Care Plan to handle terminal signs and symptoms and supply assistance for the individual and their family.

Hospice Care: A Satisfying Career

Regarding hospice care, people ask a certain question: How satisfying is this career personally and professionally? Only few research has been made to quantify stress amounting to hospice care. But according to a survey report from the AAHPM of 2010, 96% of respondents said they prefer hospice care than any other health care profession. Comments from these participants highlight the personal and professional rewards associated with working with patients during their life-ending journey.

Another admirable benefit of working as a hospice care provider is the creation of partnerships. When care providers are fulfilled, they motivate the patients to thrive. And when patients thrive, it furthers the care provider’s sense of satisfaction. Success is contagious and breeds more success. This creates a spiral of positivity.

Moreover, this field is still young and attracting more people to join in the course. This is because of the extraordinary personal and professional rewards brought to existing providers. Hospice care practitioners know the healing benefits a treatment can bring to patients who suffer from painful illnesses, prolong stress, or even nearing death.

Hospice care patients, come in all ages and different walks of life, come into the program are usually only have 6 months to live. So, providing love, concern, and support to patients and their families in this vulnerable time can bring much satisfaction. Although it is emotionally challenging, it can be very fulfilling.

Caring for dying patients have had negative implications due to limited research. However, many practitioner’ testimonials say that their work is very satisfying. Though they have to deal with the pain of seeing someone die, this experience gave opportunities to do reflection and form meaningful realizations based that had an impact in their life.

Although hospice care has its own challenges, this career brings joy to both patients and the hospice care provider.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HOSPICE CARE

One of the greatest fears widely expressed by the Americans is dying in pain. This is where the importance of hospice care takes into place. Hospices provide care for terminally ill patients until their last breath. They partner with health care professionals to provide the needed care in different places. While there are facilities that concentrate on hospice care, majority of these professionals come to patient’s homes.  Hospice care’s main goal is to provide dignity, respect, and care to alleviate any form of pain felt during the end-of-life journey.

A lot of people think that hospice centers let patients die alone not being surrounded by loved ones. They feel that death in such facilities is without privacy, self-worth, and that personal, religious, cultural, or spiritual request are neglected. This is the underlying reason what research say that 80% of Americans would not consider this type of care for last minute concerns.

How can the situation be improved? There should be proper awareness of hospice care in the society. By improving people’s understanding of this end of life care option, additional support would be gained. In addition, the public must realize the importance of this care and more training is needed to improve hospice care.

Local hospices could also take action in improving the situation by outreach programs within their local communities, offering free home and day services. Such activity would raise the community’s awareness and take off the misconceptions.

As the elderly population in the U.S. increases rapidly, the more we need hospice care. The decisions about death and dying should not be avoided, it should be faced and planned ahead. By preparing for legal and financial preparations, both patients and their loved ones would be alleviated with the pain associated in this unique life-to-end journey.

Where do Hospice Care Took Place?

Hospice care typically takes place in the patient’s home or wherever possible. This permits the dying to stay in familiar, secure surroundings and close to people they know. As a hospice nurse, you will basically be making house calls to the homes of very sick people to provide physical, psychological, and spiritual assistance to both the patients as well as their families. And that means you must be at ease driving around throughout the day and going into people’s homes.

But if the patient’s family is struggling to look after the patient, you will find in-patient hospice facilities, usually situated on the top floor of a nursing ward or hospital. An in-patient hospice has beds like a hospital, but that is about where the resemblances end. There aren’t any machines, and there are no prohibitive visiting hours; family and friends are always welcome. The atmosphere is rather quiet and peaceful. Almost all of the rooms are exclusive rooms in contrast to a hospital, and in comparison to a hospital, an in-patient hospice has reasonably few beds.

Hospice care is like a transitional place where the patient and the family are joined together for the remaining days of the patient. Hospice care is almost similar to palliative care. They have the same goals which are to ease symptoms and improve quality of life of the patient as well as to prepare the family members. Hospice care is suitable when there is a life expectancy of less than six months. Whenever a curative treatment is no longer working or effective, or in some cases the patient no longer wants to continue them, hospice becomes the other option.

More about the Hospice Care

Your physician and the hospice team works along with you and your loved ones to create a plan of health care that fits your preferences and needs. Your plan of care consists of hospice services that Medicare includes.  In the event you are eligible for a hospice care, you will have an exclusively trained team and support accessible to assist you and your loved ones to deal with your illness.

Furthermore, a hospice nurse and doctor are on-call Round the clock, 7 days a week, to provide you and your loved ones with assistance and care when it’s needed. A hospice physician is part of your healthcare team. Your family doctor or a nurse practitioner may also be part of this team as the attending medical professional to monitor your care.

Only your family doctor (not a nurse practitioner) that you’ve selected to serve as the attending medical professional-and the hospice medical director can approve that you’re critically ill and have 6 months or less to live. The hospice advantage permits you and your loved ones to remain together in the convenience of your home if you don’t need care in an inpatient facility. If the hospice team can determine that you’ll require inpatient care, the hospice team can make the necessary arrangements for your stay.

Most hospice individuals get hospice care in the convenience of their house and with their own families. Determined by your condition, you may even get hospice care in a Medicare-approved hospice center, hospital, elderly care, or other long-term care center.

Hospice care is definitely designed for those who have 6 months or fewer to live if the illness goes its normal route. If you live more than 6 months, you may still get hospice care, provided that the hospice medical director or other hospice doctor re-certifies that you’re critically ill. Hospice care emerges in benefit durations. A benefit period starts the day you start to acquire hospice care and it ends when your 90-day or 60-day period ends. For additional specific details on a hospice plan of care, contact your national or state hospice organization.