End Of Life Care Essay

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Recommended: Challenges of palliative care

Palliative Care: What Is End of Life Care

If the title of this article threw you for a loop – good. If it didn't, then you may be one of the millions of Americans who confuse palliative care and hospice care. While that is not always a terrible thing, there are times when the confusion could lead to problems for your senior loved one.

Palliative care is defined by GetPalliativeCare.org as "specialized medical care for people with serious illnesses...focused on providing patients with relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress of a serious illness—whatever the diagnosis. The goal is to improve the quality of life for both the patient and the family." Palliative care can be utilized at any stage of an illness, injury, or disease and can be utilized in conjunction with …show more content…

In fact, next to pain management, the most important part of palliative care is increased communication between the patient, the family, and the health care team.

Hospice, or end of life care, is defined by the National Institute of Aging as "the support and medical care provided to an individual during the time leading up to their death". The care can extend up to six months prior to the time of expected death, but can go even longer if the senior started care and simply held on longer than expected. Hospice care focuses on maximizing the quality of a person's end of life experience after curative and restorative treatments have ceased.

The confusion arises because a large component of hospice care includes palliative care services and personnel. Sadly, because of the confusion, many seniors and their families have historically avoided palliative care treatments because they mistakenly believed that starting palliative care would result in the stopping or canceling of curative

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End Of Life Care Essay

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