Hospice Care, Essay Example

The Hospice Movement started in 1967 at St. Christopher’s, London. It started under the leadership of Dame Cicely Saunders. Saunders used the word hospice to mean exceptional care accorded to dying patients (Pattinson, 2011, p.6). The first hospices took care for the sick, wounded and dying, but the modern ones only take care for the dying. Hospice provides compassionate and humane care for persons suffering from incurable diseases in their last phases to live comfortably in their situations.

Hospice refers to a philosophy of care, which accepts that death is the final life stage. Helping patients live their last days as pain-free and alert as possible are the goals of hospice (Pattinson, 2011, p.30). The care of hospice aims to manage symptoms to help a person spent his or her last days with quality and dignity while their loved ones surround them. This happens when conventional treatment cannot help the suffering person anymore. It is the aim of hospices to improve last day’s quality of life. Hospice neither hastens nor postpones death, but it affirms life. The care offered aims to treat the person instead of the disease. Hospice care includes the patient’s family and the patient in making decisions. It does not focus on the length of life but the quality of life.

Hospice care has a 24-hour plan I a week which can take place at the patient’s home, nursing home, private hospice facility or a hospital. In the United States, occurrence of most hospice care is at home, where friends and family members act as the hands-on caregivers. Therefore, a patient under hospice care should have, 24 hours a day, a caregiver in the home with them.

Demographics of those served by Hospice Care

The National Hospital and Palliative Care organization assert that about 885,000 patients and families were admitted into the 3200 US hospice programs (). One in every four deaths, in the US, takes place in hospice care. The hospice patients are as follows:

1. 63% are 75 years and above
2. 54% are female
3. 81% make Caucasian
4. 3% are Latino or Hispanic
5. 9% are African American or Black
6. 9% are Hawaiian or Asian/Pacific I slander, and
7. 6% do not fall in any category above

In hospice care, there are five non-cancerous death causes as follows:

• 11% deaths as a result of end stage heart diseases
• 10% deaths by dementia
• 7% due to lung disease
• 3% due to end-stage of kidney disease
• 2% due to end-stage of liver disease
• Others include illnesses such as Parkinson’s, AIDS, and/or Alzheimer’s

As of January 2002, the Medicare Program identified 2,265 hospices. We also have about 200 volunteer hospices working in the United States.

Hospice Care Services

Hospice care has many features, which set it apart from other health care types. It has a team of professionals who come, from various disciplines, to manage hospice care. This means that, in hospice care, there are many interacting disciplines working together. According to (Connor, 2009, p.7) Doctors, social workers, nurses, counselors, clergy, therapists, home health aides, and trained volunteers provide care for patients and families. These professionals give their services based on their expertise areas. The team gives complete palliative care with the aim of relieving symptoms and offering emotional, social, and spiritual support.

Another crucial service in hospice care is the pain-symptom control. This helps a patient to feel comfortable while allowing him or her stay in control of life and enjoy it. This means managing pain, discomfort, and the side effects, which guarantees the patient freedom from symptoms and pain as possible. Pain and symptom control also enables the patient to enjoy those around him or her while making crucial decisions. Hospice care also provides spiritual care. Spiritual care should meet ones needs, since people are not the same in terms of religious beliefs and spiritual needs. Hospice spiritual care may be to help a patient consider what death means to him, or her, helping them say goodbye or in case of certain religious rituals or ceremonies.

Hospice care provides inpatient care as well as home care. Although hospice care normally is at home, a patient may need admission to a hospital, hospital inpatient facility, or extended-care facility (Connor, 2009, p.13). The hospice can arrange for inpatient care involving itself in the care of the patient with the family. When situation has improved, the patient can go back to the in-home care. Hospices also provide respite care where a patient, caregivers and the family may require some time away from the nursing home. The hospice service may thus provide them a break via respite care. This can take place up to a period of five days. The patient, during this period, receives care in beds or the hospice facility set aside for this in hospitals or nursing homes. Families can go to momentous events, plan a minivacation, or get the much-needed rest, while the patient receives care in an inpatient setting, at home.

Hospice provides family conferences, which are often under the leadership of hospice social worker or nurse. These conferences provide crucial information to the family members about the condition of their patients and the expectations. Family conferences give opportunities for all to talk about what to expect, to share feelings, to talk about the requirements of situations, and learn about the dying process and death itself (Pattinson, 2011, p.33). Family conferences can provide tremendous support and stress relief to the family members. It is also possible to hold informal daily conferences as the nursing assistant or nurse talks with the patient and the caregivers during routine visits. Hospice also provides bereavement care. This refers to that care at the mourning time when a family looses a loved one. The hospice care team, with the surviving loved ones, works to help them through the process of grieving. A trained clergy member, volunteer, or professional counselor offer support to survivors via phone calls, visits and/or letter contacts and as well as by means of support groups. The hospice team can at times refer family members and friends giving care to other professional or medical care if required.

Hospice also provides the services of volunteers who play a crucial role in delivery and planning of hospice care. They may be lay people or professionals providing services ranging from hands-on care to fundraising or working in the hospice office. Hospices also offer staffs support services. Their staffs are kind and caring people. They communicate well, listen to clients, and have an interest to work with families coping with life threatening illnesses. They have specialized training in unique issues, which surround death and dying.

I chose hospice care because of the unique treatment it offers to people with terminal illnesses. We note that most of the patients here may not live more that six months, but hospices strive to give them hope times of trouble. This treatment ensures comfort for one even though he or she will die soon. Death causes too much sorrow. We do not need to address only the patient of terminal illness but also those who surround him. Hospice care goes beyond the patient’s illness and touches the hearts of the bereaved.

References

Connor, S., R. (2009). Hospice and Palliative Care. Oxford, UK: Taylor & Francis.

Pattinson, S. (2011). The Final Journey: Complete Hospice Care for the Departing Vaisnava. (2^nd edition). Badger, CA: Torchlight Publishing.