Hospice Care : An Effective Patient And Individual Preferences At The End Of Life

A person’s life can end at any age. They can depart quickly or slowly. End of life care, also known as palliative care, is the care of patients that are not only in their final hours or days but the patients with a terminal illness that has become incurable. End of life care takes into mind what the patient desires so it is recommended that they consider an advanced care plan also known as an advance directive and living will. These documents allow the patient to formulate decisions on the future of their care if, at any point, they cannot vocally express themselves.

Caring Hospice is a company that will provide nursing care to patients that are terminally ill. The ultimate goal is to insure the patient is kept as comfortable as possible while maintaining dignity during the dying process. This company will send registered nurses to the patient’s home for routine physical assessments, medication teaching and administration, education about terminal diseases and the dying process. The nursing staff will also create and maintain appropriate plans of care for the multi-disciplinary team to provide holistic care to the patient.

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

A survey was conducted in 2000 on more than 9,000 patients discharged from more than 2,000 hospices on the services they received (Carlson, 2007). It revealed that 22% of them received five major palliative care services, which varied among the hospices. These palliative care services were nursing care, physician care, medication management, psychological care, and caregiver support. Approximately 14% of the hospices provided all five services and 33% provided only one or two services. Only 59% of these patients received medication management services. These included administering medication, dispensing correct dosages, and setting and following dosage schedule.

1.1 Caring for patients at the end of life is a challenging task that requires not only the consideration of the patient as a whole but also an understanding of the family, social, legal, economic, and institutional circumstances that surround patient care.

Caring for patients at the end of life is a challenging task that requires not only the consideration of the patient as a whole but also an understanding of the family, social, legal, economic, and institutional circumstances that surround patient care.

In contrast to the costs of standard medical care, hospice care provides an alternative that is both cost effective and caring. Unfortunately, it is actually difficult to quantify the cost savings associated with hospice care due to the fact that comparing costs during the last year of life are impacted by the variability in the length of hospice use. A study at Duke University went to extensive lengths to provide a comparison that provided an effective method for accurate comparisons. The comparison showed a reduced average Medicare expenditure of $2,309 per person from the time hospice care was initiated in comparison to the same situation handled through standard medical methods (Taylor, Ostermann, Houtven, Tulsky, & Steinhauser, 2007). The amount of cost savings varied depending on the primary health condition and the

Great strides have been made to improve end-of-life care through palliative care and hospice programs, but sometimes that’s just not enough. In America, the care that is offered to the elderly and the chronically ill is less than ideal. Statistics show that an

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.

Rather, the hospice staff and the patient understand the patient is going to die and no further treatment options are available. Therefore, hospice care centers direct their attention towards providing a dignified ending to a patient’s life by delivering comfort and emotional support through a palliative care approach designated to alleviate pain and emotional distress. For example, at Hospice of Dayton, each patient residing at the care facility is provided their own room where their family is able to stay with them and the patient is able to receive the pain management and emotional support they need to die a little closer to peace and security. Additionally, at Hospice of Dayton, there are full-time doctors, nurses, counselors, and religious support-staff that provide patients the physical treatment they need to minimize their pain, as well as the emotional support they need to live the last moments of their life with dignity and emotional well-being. Most importantly, Hospice of Dayton because of its volunteers. Volunteers provide the invaluable service of listening, crying, and laughing with those who may not necessarily have someone to spend time with, while they undergo their long, arduous, and painful experience of

Care designed to give supportive care to people in the final phase of a terminal illness and focus on comfort and quality of life, rather than cure. The goal is to enable patients to be comfortable and free of pain, so that they live each day as fully as possible. Aggressive methods of pain control may be used. Hospice programs generally are home-based, but they sometimes provide services away from home in freestanding facilities, in nursing homes, or within hospitals. The philosophy of hospice is to provide support for the patient's

Hospice care is a model of care that focuses on relieving symptoms and supporting patients with a life expectancy of six months or less (Altshuler, 2013). For most nurses, caring for a dying elder (individual aged 65 years and above) is a discrete, time-limited experience that begins with first contact, often in a hospital, emergency room, or long term care facility, and ends with the death itself (Phillips & Reed, 2008).

Hospice of the North Coast’s mission is “To provide compassionate, personalized care to patients and families during the end-of-life transition.”

Family practitioners are well suited to provide end-of-life care because their training emphasizes treatment of the whole person, managing comorbidities, and coordination of care. Hospice care by definition is interdisciplinary and available around the clock, to allow even solo practitioners to manage terminal patients using a multidisciplinary team. Treatment focuses not only on medical

I have been a registered nurse at UCLA for 18 months. One particular issue that has captured my attention is the utilization of palliative care in health care. Because nurses are generally at the bedside all the time, they have an important role to play in voicing the importance of its utilization and implementation in the patient’s care.