Essay On Palliative Care Vs Hospice Care

Many terminally-ill patients give up hope when treatments are no longer available to help them and hospice care is given to them as an option. However, hospice care has proven itself to provide the best quality care for the last six months of the dying. The purpose of hospice is to provide the best care for terminally-ill patients at the end stage of their lives. Hospice offer services to support too many aspects a patient’s life such as medical, legal, spiritual care. Hospice includes art therapists, music therapists, and certified chaplains on the palliative team.

Currently, Medicare, Medicaid, and most private insurance plans cover hospice services. Medicare regulations require that hospice care be provided at home, with only short stays in an inpatient facility. (Robinson, Segall. 2011)

Palliative care is a relatively new concept, stemming from the hospice movement of the 1960s. This type of care focuses on the quality of life of its patients at any time in their treatment process. Palliative care is a concept that is often used synonymously with hospice care. Although it can be congregated with hospice care, they are not the same thing. Thus, it can easily be misunderstood. Sherner (2015) explains that both clinicians and people alternate palliative care and hospice. Unfortunately, she says, these people believe that palliative care implies the patient is refusing curative care. The purpose of this analysis is to explore the concept, clarify the meaning, and differentiate the concept of palliative care.

Hospice: Understanding and Caring for End-of-Life Death is inevitable. It is one of the only certainties in life. Regardless, people are often uncomfortable discussing death. Nyatanga (2016) posits that the idea of no longer existing increases anxiety and emotional distress in relation to one’s mortality. Because of the difficulty in level of care for end-of-life patients, the patient and the family often need professional assistance for physical and emotional care. Many family caregivers are not professionally trained in medicine, and this is where hospice comes into play. Hospice aims to meet the holistic needs of both the patient and the patient’s family through treatment plans, education, and advocacy. There is a duality of care to the treatment provided by hospice staff in that they do not attempt to separate the patient’s care from the family’s care. Leming and Dickinson (2011) support that hospice, unlike other clinical fields, focuses on the patient and the family together instead of seeing the patient independent of the family. Many times in hospitals, the medical team focuses solely on the goal of returning the patient back to health in order for them to return to their normal lives. They do not take into account the psychological and spiritual components of the patient’s journey and the journey that the family must take as well. For treatment of the patient, Leming and Dickinson agree that hospice does not attempt to cure patients, and instead concentrates solely

The World Health Organisation (2010) defines palliative care as: An approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing problems associated with life threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual. It is also our duty to support John and his wife`s in their decision for John to die at home, Department of health (2008) patients should have a choice over the care they receive and where.

Changing my perspective of palliative care Over the past five weeks, I have learned what palliative care really is all about. I found that there were areas that really changed my perspective as well, about what palliative care is. Some of these include, but are not limited to, when palliative care

Long Term Care -Hospice Hospice is a process to end-of-life care and a kind of support facility for terminally ill patients. It provides comforting care, patient-centered care and related services. Comforting care relieves discomfort without improving the patient’s condition or curing his illness. Hospice is

When it comes to varies insurance companies such as Medicaid and Medicare insurance company pays very differently. Medicaid will pay for the patient medical billing and patient who has Medicare depending what they have if it’s Medicare plan A or B. There are very different and Medicare A will only covers inpatient care at a hospital, skilled nursing facilities, and hospice. For Medicare B will cover doctor’s visits, and any other health care providers services, outpatient care, durable medical equipment, home healthcare, and there are other services that it may cover. So what not covered by Medicare A and B they will have to pay out of pocket unless they have any other insurance that will pay the remaining. Healthcare providers can have a

Medicare enrollees must cover the rest of the cost. These out of pocket costs vary depending on the amount of health care a Medicare enrollee need. They might include uncovered services such as long-term, dental, hearing, and vision care and supplemental insurance.

Palliative care is a system of holistic care aimed to satisfy the requirements of the chronically ill, typically within their home and community rather than as an in-patient1. Hospice is based on the same principles of care, however, it requires that a patient be deemed with six months or less to live and that life-sustaining treatments be ceased, creating an important distinction between the two. Hospice and palliative care both provide comfort, but hospice is for comfort during end-of-life. Pain and palliative care patients have indicated that receiving that care not only reduced their pain that was once intolerable either completely or to a substantial extent, but it also maintained or increased their hope and outlook on life1. In this country, palliative medicine is a relatively new field of medicine. It wasn’t until 2014 that the WHO began to recognize “palliative and end of life care services as essential and integral to health systems worldwide”2.

The most effective way to plan for end of life care is to start a long time before it is needed. It may be hard to address dying with your senior loved one, but not doing so is going to be even more difficult when the care is needed and you are in the midst of a health crisis.

When you are out of options it is time to consider choosing palliative treatment vs. continuing a no longer effective curative treatment plan, which may in fact compromise quality of life and time spent with family. The focus can then transition to making the patient feel as comfortable as possible. This is when hospice services offer patients, families and caregivers choices for symptom management. Patients and families can now establish a new goal which is to achieve the best possible quality of life. Hospice provides care in the patient's own home, a nursing home, assisted living and Alzheimer's facilities.

Hospice care enables patients to spend the last moments of their life with dignity and comfort.

Palliative care helps patients suffering from progressive cancer by improving that person’s quality of life.

Hospice is a component of palliative care. A person does not necessarily have to be dying in order to see a palliative care specialist. This is where the service is often underutilized in the hospital. In the 18 months I have been a nurse, I have cared for many patients with chronic illnesses who have dealt with symptoms that have severely impacted their quality of life. Most of the time, it seems as though the patient’s care providers are interested in treating the patient’s acute problems. My experience has been that the symptoms are often overlooked or are being treated in a manner that is to the dissatisfaction and discomfort of the patient.