Hospice and Palliative Care
Hospice and palliative care provides a more dignified and comfortable alternative to spending the final months in the impersonal atmosphere of a hospital, far from family, friends, pets, and all you know and love, for many chronically ill patients. Palliative medication helps you relieve pain, while the hospice offers special treatment for both you as a patient and your family to improve the quality of life. In the last step of your life, finding hospice and palliative care is not about giving up hope or hastening death, but rather a way to get the most suitable and highest quality care.
For those whose life expectancy is six months or less, hospice is traditionally a choice and requires palliative treatment (pain and symptom relief) rather than continuous curative steps, allowing you to enjoy your last days to the fullest, with intent, dignity, grace, and encouragement. While some hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care facilities have on-site hospice care, it is delivered in the patient's own home in most cases. This helps you to spend your final days, surrounded by your loved ones and helped by hospice workers, in a familiar, supportive setting.
The word "palliative care" applies to any medication that relieves symptoms, which may be effective at any point of an illness, even though by some means there is still hope of a cure. It is an approach that focuses on pain management, symptoms, and mental stress induced by severe disease. In certain cases, palliative medications can be used to mitigate the side effects of curative treatment, such as chemotherapy-related nausea relief, which can help you tolerate more severe or longer-term therapy.
Talking about palliative care and hospice
Even though death is an inevitable part of life, many of us are understandably always terrified by the thought of dying. Death remains a taboo topic for many in Western culture. As a result, many patients and their families are hesitant to even consider hospice care or palliative care possibilities. Although most individuals would prefer to die in their own homes, it is still the norm for terminally ill patients to die in the hospital, receiving either unnecessary or inadequate care. Usually, their loved ones have only minimal access and sometimes skip sharing their last moments of life.
For the last few days of life, some families who choose hospice care sometimes do so only, and then regret not having enough time to say goodbye to their loved one. It's important for those with a life-limiting illness to learn what they can about hospice and palliative care and share their feelings with loved ones before a medical crisis strikes to ensure that your family understands your wishes. They are free to devote their resources to caring, kindness, and making the most of the time remaining when your loved ones are clear about your desires for treatment.
How it works in hospice and palliative care
As a patient, all facets of your life and well-being are the subject of hospice care: physical, social, mental, and spiritual. No age limit exists; everyone is eligible for care in the late stages of life. Although the facilities they offer are different from specific hospice programs around the world, most include a team that may include your specialist, a hospice doctor, case manager, registered nurses and licensed practical nurses, a psychiatrist, dietician, therapist, pharmacologist, social workers, a pastor, and various qualified volunteers.
The hospice team creates a pain management and symptom relief care plan customized to your specific needs, and offers all the palliative medications and treatments, medical supplies, and equipment needed. Hospice treatment is typically given in the comfort of your own home and a family member, supervised by trained medical personnel, serves as the primary caregiver.
In order to determine the needs and offer additional treatment and resources, such as speech and physical therapy, clinical massage, or nutritional assistance, hospice providers make daily visits. To assist with bathing and other personal care facilities, trained home health aides can also be deployed.
A hospice team offers emotional and spiritual support according to your needs, desires, and values, as well as providing staff on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And your loved ones are also provided with emotional and spiritual care, including grief counselling.
The advantages of palliative care and hospice
Much as obstetricians and midwives provide help and expertise at the beginning of life, at the end of life, hospice care services provide advanced knowledge and support. Hospice will decrease anxiety for both you and your family when you are terminally ill by helping you make the most of the remaining time and reach some degree of acceptance. In reality, studies published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management showed that, on average, terminally ill patients who received hospice treatment lived 29 days longer than those who did not opt for hospice at the end of life.
As a terminally ill patient, sometimes already in a compromised physical and mental condition, it may help prevent the risks of over-treatment to make the decision to receive hospice care instead of continued curative treatment.
A hospice team's in-home treatment also ensures that you receive better monitoring than you would in a hospital.
Hospice treatment also focuses on the emotional needs and spiritual well-being of both you and your loved ones, in addition to concentrating on your physical wellbeing and comfort.
A guide to programs for hospice care
Services are usually organized according to you, the client, and your family's desires and wishes. Over time and during the three separate phases of treatment, these can change:
The final stages of a disease
The dying process
The time of bereavement
A hospice team can provide any combination of the following services, depending on your circumstances and stage of care:
Support of Nursing. Registered nurses monitor your prescription and symptoms and help inform both you and your family on what's going on. Also, the nurse is the connection between you, your family, and the doctor.
Social services. A social worker advises and advises you and your family and serves as your representative for the community, ensuring you have access to the services you need.
Services of Doctors. Your doctor approves the treatment plan and works with the team at the hospice. As a consultant and resource, a medical director is available to the attending physician, patient, and care team in a full hospice program.
Spiritual Support and Counselling. To visit you and provide spiritual counseling at home, clergy and other spiritual counselors are available. Spiritual treatment is a personal practice, which can include helping you to explore what death means to you, solving "unfinished business," saying goodbye to loved ones, and conducting a particular religious or ritual ceremony.
Home Health Assistants and Services for Homemakers. Personal treatment such as washing, shaving, and nail care is provided by home health aides. For light housekeeping and meal planning, homemakers may be available.
Professional Help for Volunteers. Caring volunteers have long been the hospice's backbone. They are available to listen, give compassionate assistance to you and your family, and help with daily activities such as shopping, babysitting, and carpooling.
Physical, Career, and Speech Therapies. These professionals may help you learn new ways to perform activities, such as walking, dressing, or feeding yourself, that may have become difficult due to illness.
Care Respite. Respite care gives your family a break from caregiving intensity. For example, a short inpatient stay in a hospice facility will provide both you and your family caregivers with a 'breather'.
The Treatment of Inpatients. There will be occasions when you may need to be admitted to a hospital, extended-care facility, or a hospice inpatient facility, even though you are cared for at home. To ease the dying process, medical intervention can often be recommended, requiring round-the-clock nursing care at a hospital. Your hospice team will plan and stay active in your recovery and with your family for all such inpatient care.
Supporting Bereavement. Bereavement is the time of grieving that we all undergo after a loved one's death. To support them during the healing process, the hospice care team will work with your remaining family members. Help can involve a counselor or qualified volunteer visiting your family during the first year at particular times, as well as phone calls, emails, and feedback from the support group. If applicable, the team can also refer your loved ones to medical or other skilled treatment.
