The Hospice Field : Hospice

This author’s personal perceptions concerning patients facing a lingering terminal illness, have been shaped by over 20 years of critical care nursing experience. Facing death and illness on a daily basis requires self-examination and a high degree of comfort with one’s own mortality, limits and values. Constant exposure to the fragility of life forces respect for the whole person and the people who love them. A general approach to patients who are actively dying is to allow them to define what they want and need during this time. The nurse’s role

When a person is diagnosed with a terminally illness and is given an expectancy of six months or less to live, it is time to concentrate on the type of care will need. Many times a person and their family will turn to hospice care. The meaning of hospice is to provide care to a person who is terminally ill. Hospice does not speed up or postpone death. Hospice is a type of care that provides services to improve the quality of life for the patient and family.

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

Patients that qualify or use palliative care also have a terminal diagnosis but usually have a longer life expectancy than those with hospice. The definition for hospice and palliative care is something many nursing students learn during their program. Young-Ran, Min, and Kyoung-Soon (2015) found in a study that 70% of nurses in a general hospital setting that had cared for a terminal patient had no prior education or training for palliative care. Nursing education continues to evolve in attempts to better prepare nursing students for life after their program completion. Attempts to better familiarize students with end of life care some programs are using simulation. Simulation has been found to be an effective method of teaching when related to high stress and emotional situations (Moreland, Lemieux, and Myers, 2012). It is great that there have been attempts to increase the amount of education in this specialty area especially since 76% of dying patients are receiving nursing care at time of death (Moreland, Lemieux, and Myers, 2012). Now it will be important for current nurses and educators to continue to increase the amount of information provided in nursing programs and to novice nurses about hospice and palliative specialty

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 extended in a healthcare facility or at home. Its objective is to provide compassionate, emotional, and spiritual care for the dying patient.

Registered Nursing takes skilled and hard working people. There are many jobs in the Nursing field. To name a few, there are: Hospice Nurses, Long Term Care Facility Nurses, ER Nurses, Pediatric Nurses, Geriatric Nurses, Acute Care Nurses, etc. Hospice Nurses are jobs taken by people that are strong hearted and strong willed. I had an experience with a Hospice Nurse in a job shadow. I went to the houses of her patients instead of a facility. We went to three different houses to take care of her assigned residents. Her patients loved her very much and she did her job with love and care. Three days after my experience with her, one of her residents passed away. They had a great patient and nurse relationship. She was filled with sadness and I also felt sad for the resident’s family and other caregivers that cared for him. Hospice patients are only said to live about six months or less. Not all residents pass away after six months, some live longer. Hospice care is given to patients that are dying, but hospice can also go on pause because the patient becomes more independent. The job of hospice nurses is to take care of the resident nearing the time of death, not to cure their diseases. My job shadow said that it is always sad when her patients go, but she knows that they are not suffering like they were when they were living. The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization states, “Hospice care professionals and volunteers provide services that address all of the

Nurses: Assist the patients and families to cope with the end-of-life process such as assessing and

The doctors were pretty sure that Pierre had less than 6 months to live, so he fell well within the guidelines for hospice coverage. Should hospice coverage be limited to those with 6 months or less to live, or should other be covered? 6 months is a random figure and I think that the covering other could help families deal with hospice care a little better; it would give them a better understanding of what hospice-type services is entailed. It also could be too expensive for covering others and how can you know for sure if 6 months is suitable.

Death is inevitable at some point everyone must face it. Whether it is the death of a family member, friend, or a family pet, people are forced to deal with the death. Nurses however have more frequent encounters with death than the average person does. When a patient dies in a healthcare setting his or her nurse is obligated to deal with that as well. They must find ways to cope with the increased amount of death that

I do home health CNA jobs and trying to get in to be a CNA in a hospice home health and later on, I would like to be a visiting nurse to a hospice patients. I conducted an interview to one hospice psychologist I know and the information I’ve learned is intense and I’ve realized that I wanted to know more about this field. So what is hospice? Hospice is a program of care for terminally ill patients and their love ones; it’s a program about life and about living life to the fullest until the end. One professional that can help what’s they are going through is psychologist. They assessed what the patient and family needs and help them to understand and evaluate the options that meet their needs. Many psychologist have compassion working on hospice,

This section examines the literature relevant to the efficacy of supervision in hospice professional as it relates to job burnout among them. This question is an important one because hospice professionals cope with loss on their job frequently. An unique challenge that is faced by hospice professionals is that every patient they care for will die and this leaves the grieving family to be supported. The care that hospice professionals provide requires them to become an intimate part of the patients live. The need for effective supervisions is highly needed in hospice professionals and is crucial in aiding them to serve patients and families in challenging times. This section will highlight research that documents severity

End of life care is something that is becoming extremely prevalent today. This end of life care is referred to as Hospice. Here, patients who are terminally ill may be placed in Hospice care, where they will be under constant supervision and will be cared for. However, although Hospice is an ongoing process that exists everyday, there are few people who really know exactly what Hospice is and what it consists of. Upon further reading, it is hopeful that one will get a better sense of understanding about Hospice.

Caring for an elderly parent is very difficult, especially if you do not have any assistance. This can be very demanding on the family and not everyone is up for this task. Hospice provides a service that takes a lot of this pressure off the family. They are there to provide and cater to the dying patient, so they are comfortable in their last few days before moving on.

Abstract: Nurses usually face many stressful factors and burnout conditions while caring for patients. Some of these issues include concerns for patients, their families, time factors and levels of professionalism. Communication and corporation also lead to stress among nurses caring for dying patients. Lack of enough nurses to effectively attend to the treatment needs of a larger population of dying patients is another stressful factor in the nursing profession. These issues should be addressed to make the work of nurses effective.

I believe it takes a special person to be a hospice nurse. Although nurses outside of hospice deal with patients dying or having a life-limiting illness; it is not every encounter with a