When a person comes to this stage with an advanced, fatal diagnosis of a disease, the loved ones at the time are left to consider several important factors about how best to care for and approach caring for the family with any kind of deadly disease. Hospice care is a type of care offered at such a time to those who use it. Learn why and how patients receive care from hospice care services as a way to medically manage their illness.
If you don’t already know, hospice cares for someone. The purpose of hospice care is to comfort, protect dignity, enhance the value of each person’s own special life, and provide comfort and emotional help rather than a cure for a deadly disease. Hospice implies it doesn’t mean that persons have been abandoned; no treatment is available for them yet. It does show their needs are met during this time.
What Is Hospice Care?
The simple definition of hospice explains that hospice care is a special kind of care provided to those living with a terminal illness or about to die. Hospice concentrates more on managing pain and other symptoms associated with an illness or disease to give the patient the best possible quality of life.
Hospice care offers tremendous emotional, social, and spiritual support as well. A group of professional individuals collaborates to support the patient and family to develop care goals according to the needs, desires, and goals. The care may be provided at home, in a senior care facility, a nursing home, a hospice care center, or other suitable environments.
Why Do People Choose Hospice Care?
When a person’s serious illness has reached a stage at which the comfort of a loved one and the quality of his or her life are seen as a higher priority than invasive measures for extending life. Your doctor will help your loved one decide whether he or she is a hospice candidate. What treatments may he or she want to pursue versus stopping aggressive care? A decision for hospice may mean continued repeated hospital admissions or painful treatments and medications, which can have very real side effects and yield a less-than-rewarding experience for the patient and family. Choosing hospice allows one to gain additional quality time and manage painful or irritating symptoms.
Focusing on Comfort Instead of Aggressive Treatment
Families choose Hospice so their loved one can be comfortable when living with an advanced illness, which is often experienced through such problems as pain, difficulty in breathing, nausea, fatigue, and feelings of anxiety or the overwhelming need for support, to name just a few symptoms, which the team can work to relieve so that the person can live with relative comfort.
Hospice means that the patient still receives adequate treatment. Whether this includes rounds of treatment by doctors or nurses or support from Hospice Care workers or social support, the person still receives adequate care. The goals of care are just centered more on the relief of these and the improvement of the general quality of the patient’s life.
Spending More Meaningful Time With Loved Ones
Hospice care could give patients yet another precious time with loved ones instead of a long trip to the hospital and a series of procedures that are challenging to administer. I’m certain the majority of people will love and be extremely appreciative to just stay at their own home to relax with their loved one around rather than travel.
What Does Hospice Care Mean for Patients and Families?
For most people, hospice care will mean a plan of care with a unified team approach centered on comfort and the needs and wishes of the person nearing the end of life. The team assesses symptom management, dialogue between medical and care staff with the family, and, in some cases, adjustment in the plan of care and/or treatment based on shifting need.
For family caregivers, hospice care will mean the professional services, skills, knowledge of illness-related problems, as well as the human, ethical concern required to comfort a person with an advanced illness and to assist and enable the family in providing quality palliative and end-of-life care.
Services may involve professional expertise as it pertains to the administration of medications, aid and assistance with personal care, emotional support and counsel, and an explanation or the expectation of progression of the client’s illness, with support and caregiving guidance for the grieving family to alleviate some anxiety associated with this challenge and to reduce isolation.
Read More: What Is the Difference Between Palliative Care and Hospice?
What Services Does Hospice Provide?
What Hospice offers may also depend upon the organization and each patient’s specific plan of care, but hospices essentially employ an approach where the patient is the center and multiple professions have their own responsibilities in tending to patients’ spiritual, emotional, physical, and social needs.
Common hospice services may include:
- Nursing care: Nurses assess symptoms, give clinical assistance, and feed back changes to the overall care team.
- Physician involvement: Hospice doctors can also assist in managing the patient’s medical plan and symptoms.
- Personal care assistance: The hospice aide can help your loved one bathe, dress, groom, and get to the doctor or any scheduled activities.
- Medication support: Medications for comfort or the management of the terminal illness may be coordinated within the scope of the hospice plan.
We want to package this up so you don’t have parents to manage all the services themselves.
Does Choosing Hospice Mean Giving Up?
Some mistakenly think choosing hospice is about “giving up.” Hospice is actually an approach to care. When no longer trying for treatments aimed at healing or controlling a progressive illness, but at helping a person live with as much dignity and satisfaction as possible, then care becomes comfort, quality of life, and time.
Hospice may offer families peace that their loved one will continue to receive care, from symptom management to concerns addressed. Guidance for caregivers is practical and available.
Even with support, the choice is hard. Patients and families may require time to understand what hospice offers. Open dialogue with physicians, hospice, and family will ease the way.
How Soteria Lifestyle Supports Comfort and Compassionate Care
The compassion at Soteria Lifestyle is based upon valuing the individual. This means responding compassionately to their unique needs, preferences, dignity, and their families. In situations of advanced illness, comfort and careful concern for patients’ experience can matter immensely for how the family also moves through the experience of serious illness.
Every person should be treated as an individual when in end-of-life care and not just a condition.
Personalised attention toward the wishes and personal preferences for the loved ones we care for can ease their comfort and emotional pain in this difficult time of life. Soteria Lifestyle understands that Families may have many concerns throughout this process and may want more specific information to help them navigate.
How Families Can Prepare for Hospice Care
Beginning to discuss hospice may be a difficult topic. Here’s information to help you facilitate the process: How to Start Planning Hospice Care. Discuss your wishes, symptoms, personal goals, and places of preference for hospice care by discussing hospice with your loved one’s healthcare team (doctor and nurses), friends, and family. Questions to Ask your Healthcare team hospice-care hospice ask about the care plan, the hospice team members you have access to, who to call if things get bad, and what your costs and services are not.
Families need hospice support. Families can experience a lot of emotions when one of their loved ones requires the use of hospice.
It’s perfectly normal to feel both fear and sadness, doubt, relief, and acceptance. Hospice care supports patients and caregivers through these complex emotions so that patients and loved ones can focus on cherishing the time spent together.
Final Thoughts
Knowing why someone would use Hospice to understand if hospice is the end: So, does Hospice Mean No Medical Care Ever? Many patients may assume Hospice will be the end of medical care. Hospice, however, prioritizes the individual’s symptom management, comfortable dying, quality of life and wishes, emotional comfort, and visiting loved ones.
For patients suffering from advanced conditions, symptom-centered medical care in their final days may seem attractive, yet they are still an individual with their own care plans.
Hospice Organizations such as Soteria Lifestyle can connect your loved ones to a fulfilling, personalized end-of-life care plan based on the patient’s goals. Hospice care provides the family hope and peace by understanding your options. We all struggle through tough situations and can have the support we require through organizations that help make such trying times bearable for all members involved. Looking for compassionate hospice support? Contact Soteria Lifestyle today to learn how we can help your family navigate this journey with comfort and dignity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is hospice only for people with cancer?
Yes, it is. In fact, hospice care is available to patients with extremely varied life threatening / terminal health conditions. Entry to Hospice is based upon medical condition and admission assessment.
Can a hospice patient receive care at home?
Yes, in some cases a provider will be able to provide services in the individual’s home. It may be possible to have other available facilities, for example, a particular hospice facility (if appropriate) that will provide care.
Can family members receive hospice support?
Yes; the hospice recognizes that a serious illness is difficult for the whole family. The care team will offer help, support and advice where required. Grief and loss services will be offered to the family and caregivers.
When should a family ask about hospice?
Families may be approached to discuss hospice at any stage of the disease process once it is in an advanced state of the disease process and a transition in treatment goals has become appropriate. Initiating a discussion early can also provide opportunities to explore non-crisis options.
