Tag: When Hospice Care is Needed

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.

When Hospice Care is Needed

It is very hard to accept for anyone to hear that a member of our family already needs hospice care. But as we all know, people age and there will come a time that they will no longer be able to take care of themselves. This type of care gives the family a relief in taking care of their loved ones who near the end of their lives. This can improve the total well being for whatever time is staying and allows a person to die with pride.

It will be hard to entrust your beloved to other people’s care specially when we know nothing about what to anticipate and what things to ask. The hospital will provide the necessary information needed about how the process works and the things to be done. Care can generally be provided in a patient’s or family associates member’s house, or can be carried out in another type of residence or residing service, such as an helped residing service or elderly good care facility.

Every individual has his own needs and may differ from any other individual. That is why hospice care must also have different sets of services that will be offered.  Some people may want or need 24 / 7 monitoring by a skilled nurse, whereas others prefer to be left on their own with close relatives as much as possible with only necessary tasks performed by relevant personnel on an as-needed basis.  Another factor that may change the kind of solutions offered is the time period that a person is under hospital proper care.

The truth will always hurt us. To see our beloved be in a certain situation where he /she no longer as strong as she was before. Most people don’t like to think of what it means when it is suggested that a beloved conversion to hospital proper care, it’s important to note that this type of proper care usually provides for the most sensible and relaxed way for an individual to spend his or her last days.