What is Hospice?
Hospice helps patients and families focus on living. Hospice care brings comfort, dignity, and peace to help people with a life-limiting illness live every moment of life to the fullest. It also reaches out to provide support for the family and friends who love and care for them.
Hospice provides expert medical care, pain management, and emotional and spiritual support. With Hospice comes an entire team that works together focusing on the patient’s needs whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. Support is provided to the patient’s loved ones as well.
The goal is to keep the patient as pain-free as possible, with the loved ones nearby. Addressing pain and other symptoms in their early stages, rather than waiting until they become severe, is a priority. In addition to determining the appropriate medications for pain and other symptoms, members of the care team identify the best ways to administer the medication to the satisfaction of the individual patient.
When is the right time for Hospice?
A growing number of caregivers are finding that the correct answer to the question is, “As early as possible,” as they discover all of the advantages hospice has to offer the patient as well as the caregivers. Hospice professionals are specialists in end-of-life care, and should be called upon during the first stages of a terminal illness.
Our hospice staff is trained to offer peace of mind in addition to medical care. We hear it so many times, patients and families tell us: “We wish we’d called hospice sooner.” Patients and families can benefit most from hospice care when they seek support earlier rather than in a crisis.
Special needs require the services of specialists. Hospice professionals are specialists in end-of-life care, and should be called upon during the first stages of a terminal illness.
Who is on the Hospice Care Team?
A Hospice team usually consists of:
- Chaplains or other counselors
- Certified Home Health Aides
- Hospice Physicians
- Nurses
- Social Workers
- Volunteers
- Bereavement Counselors
Often times, patients choose to have their primary doctor involved in hospice care. Both the primary doctor and the hospice medical director may work together to coordinate the patient’s medical care, especially when symptoms are difficult to manage.
In most cases, Hospice care is provided in the patient’s private residence, but may also be provided in freestanding hospice facilities, hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, or other long-term care facilities.
Although hospice provides a lot of support, the day-to-day care of a person receiving hospice care is usually provided by family, friends, or privately paid home health aides. The hospice team coaches caregivers on how to care for the patient and even provides respite care when caregivers need a break.
While family members are usually the primary caregivers for hospice patients, members of the hospice staff make regular visits to assess the patient and provide additional care or other services and hospice staff are on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
What services come with Hospice care?
Hospice offers social workers and counselors to help the family make emotional adjustments to the illness and its progression. They also can offer guidance in living wills and advance directives. Chaplains offer spiritual support as requested. Certified home health aides help by providing patient physical care and hygiene. Trained volunteers offer assistance and companionship for the patient and the family. Therapists, dieticians, special equipment needs and pharmacists are also available.
Other important benefits that come with hospice to keep in mind:
- Management of pain and other symptoms
- Assistance for patients and loved ones with the emotional, psychosocial, and spiritual aspects of dying
- Medications and medical equipment
- Instructing the family caregivers on how to care for the patient
- Grief support and counseling to the patient as well as the surviving family and friends for up to 13 months after death
- Hospice meets patients where they are, whether that is in a skilled nursing home, assisted living facility, hospital, the home of a loved one or in their own home.
- Hospice patients and families can receive care for six months or longer.
- To get the most out of what hospice offers, it’s better to have care for more than just a few days.
The best time to learn about hospice is BEFORE you or your loved one needs it.