When you think of home care for a loved one, you want comfort and convenience with quality of life. A misconception of palliative care is that it is equivalent to hospice care, which concentrates on end of life. However, palliative care is now being offered to patients whether it begins early at diagnosis or throughout ongoing treatment. It is no longer limited to medical settings as more health care agencies are now offering it in home care. Think of palliative care as “comfort” care during any stage of illness.
Is Palliative Care the Right Choice?
Choosing home health care is, understandably, an important decision for you and your loved one. Because prognosis does not influence palliative care, it is different than having medical home care. Although, it does involve treatment of symptoms and side effects of medical treatment, it also involves the emotional, social and spiritual distresses associated with illness. Patients being treated for the following diseases have found palliative home care beneficial:
• Pulmonary
• Cancer
• Heart
• Stroke
• Renal
• HIV / AIDS
• Dementia
• Liver
While this list may appear to encompass a wide variety of medical issues, the common denominator is the same – relief of pain, symptoms and side effects of
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The New England Journal of Medicine reports that early introduction of palliative care was shown to be effective in prolonging the life of lung cancer patients. Whether it is a terminal illness, chronic condition, recovery from surgery or physical rehabilitation, palliative care has expanded benefits still being discovered. It appears that whatever the ailment may be, there are beneficial results in pain control, treatment of symptoms and discomfort of side effects. It is also effective in alleviating the physical and mental stress that accompanies those
Palliative care is medical or comfort care that reduces the severity of a disease or slows its progress, but does not provide a cure (Dreeben, 2007). Different people have different needs when life is ending. Working with the incurable may sound depressing but death is a certainty and what we do each day for these patients as physical therapist assistants, matters. Providing care effectively and appropriately has a huge impact on the patient, therefore acquiring the ability to comfort and care for a patient at such a critical stage in life, is an amazin...
Treating the biological side of a terminal illness involves a spectrum of possible care that patient can pursue.
The first journal article is about advance care planning (ACP) in palliative care. This is of interest due to several clinical experiences and the realization that many families either ignore the patient’s request for end of life (EOL) care or who have no idea of how to plan for EOL care. By reading the research and understanding the methods used, this will allow for insight into how to implement palliative care into clinical practice across different sites. The authors of this original research are Jeanine Blackford PhD, RN, senior lecturer at La Trobe University in Australia, and Annette Street PhD, associate dean of research and professor of cancer and palliative care studies. According to Blackford & Street (2011), this research is important as there are many countries that “report a low percentage of people who have completed an advance care plan” (p. 2022), and ACP is needed upon admission to facilities that offer palliative care.
Hospice focuses on end of life care. When patients are facing terminal illness and have an expected life sentence of days to six months or less of life. Care can take place in different milieu including at home, hospice care center, hospital, and skilled nursing facility. Hospice provides patients and family the tool and resources of how to come to the acceptance of death. The goal of care is to help people who are dying have peace, comfort, and dignity. A team of health care providers and volunteers are responsible for providing care. A primary care doctor and a hospice doctor or medical director will patients care. The patient is allowed to decide who their primary doctor will be while receiving hospice care. It may be a primary care physician or a hospice physician. Nurses provide care at home by vising patient at home or in a hospital setting facility. Nurses are responsible for coordination of the hospice care team. Home health aides provide support for daily and routine care ( dressing, bathing, eating and etc). Spiritual counselors, Chaplains, priests, lay ministers or other spiritual counselors can provide spiritual care and guidance for the entire family. Social workers provide counseling and support. They can also provide referrals to other support systems. Pharmacists provide medication oversight and suggestions regarding the most effective
Palliative care - treatment that helps to comfort patients, while slowing the progress of a disease.
Dealing with death on a regular basis can take a toll on a person. Being a hospice nurse will never be easy and is certainly not for the faint of heart. A hospice nurse watches patient’s health decline, often times very rapidly, and many times sit by the patient’s side as they pass away. It can be exhausting both emotionally and physically. You need to have a big heart and a strong will to help those in need for the occupation. Sara Schmidt certainly never saw herself in the profession, but discovered that she has a true love for helping people.
Cancer. The word by itself can conjure images of severely ill and frail people attached to IV medications and chemotherapy drugs as they cling to life in a hospital bed. Other illustrations and pictures depict unrecognizable, misshaped organs affected by abnormal cells that grow out of control, spread, and invade other parts of the body. Cancer studies show that close to one-half of all men and one-third of all women in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer during their lives. Today, millions of people are living with cancer or have had cancer. As patients are newly diagnosed with their specific type of cancer, whether it be breast, lung, prostate, skin, or blood cancer, etc., each patient has to consider what will happen with their future health care plan and who will be involved in their long journey from treatment to recovery. Once diagnosed, cancer patients become the focal point and the center of all activity in terms of care but cancer not only physically invades the patient’s body and well-being, it goes beyond the patient and significantly affects the emotional stability and support from from their loved ones and caregivers. Based on the insidious nature of cancer and typically late detection of malignant diseases, family members (either spouses, children, parents, other relatives, and friends) often become the patient's main caregiver. These caregivers, also known as informal caregivers, provide the cancer patient with the majority of the support outside of the medical facility or hospital environment and become the primary person to provide various types of assistance. They provide the physical support with bathing and assisting in activities of daily living, they become emotional ...
The care of patients at the end of their live should be as humane and respectful to help them cope with the accompanying prognosis of the end of their lives. The reality of this situation is that all too often, the care a patient receives at the end of their life is quite different and generally not performed well. The healthcare system of the United States does not perform well within the scope of providing the patient with by all means a distress and pain free palliative or hospice care plan. To often patients do not have a specific plan implemented on how they wish to have their end of life care carried out for them. End of life decisions are frequently left to the decision of family member's or physicians who may not know what the patient needs are beforehand or is not acting in the patient's best wishes. This places the unenviable task of choosing care for the patient instead of the patient having a carefully written out plan on how to carry out their final days. A strategy that can improve the rate of care that patients receive and improve the healthcare system in general would be to have the patient create a end of life care plan with their primary care physician one to two years prior to when the physician feels that the patient is near the end of their life. This would put the decision making power on the patient and it would improve the quality of care the patient receives when they are at the end of their life. By developing a specific care plan, the patient would be in control of their wishes on how they would like their care to be handled when the time of death nears. We can identify strengths and weakness with this strategy and implement changes to the strategy to improve the overall system of care with...
Even though many dispute over the value and usefulness of treatment and care of terminally ill patients, the debate for the most useful care and pain reliever for these patients is the question that most patients, and their families, have to ask themselves daily. Wesley J. Smith suggests that Hospice care for patients with such a horrible illness is a beneficial program and that many patients need to utilize it. Smith also recommends that a valuable care option would be to “allow the terminally ill to enter hospice care without having to give up life-extending or curative treatments”. (Smith 3) With this statement, Smith demonstrates a way that these ill patients can be provided with treatment and also care for the patient’s quality of life.
Palliative care involves the holistic care to maintain and improve the quality of life of the patient and family during hospitalisation until the terminal stage. Palliation of care refers to the multidisciplinary approach of providing comfort and support for the terminally ill patient and family, thus has an important role in maintaining and improving the quality of life of the whole family. Chronic illness such as cancer gives a physiologic and emotional burden for the patient and family. Education and counselling of the possible options as well as treatments for pain and other symptoms that could help alleviate anxiety, suffering and discomfort. Palliative care provides assistance for the family as a channel for communication between the
Palliative care “focuses more broadly on improving life and providing comfort to people of all ages with serious, chronic, and life-threatening illnesses” (http://www.WebMD.com). Palliative care is not the same as hospice, since it is not only for the dying. According ...
Obj/Introduction: The challenges clinicians face with palliative care is then primarily psychosocial wellbeing along with inadequate amounts of training. Working in a capacity of such along with making end-of-life decisions, and delivering the news to members of the family can be mentally draining. Clinicians are faced with dying patients, their families, and other work related problems that may occur, so dealing with those challenges can be problematic. Palliative care is a specialized care for those who have terminal illnesses to ensure relief a comfortable state of well being. Palliative care focuses on the treatment and comfort for each patient to guarantee that certain needs are met.
Integration of palliative care in health care system to relief pain and suffering is important. Even in US the facility of hospice care is underutilized because of many factors. Having said that, first obligation of health care professionals is to relief suffering of chronically ill and terminal stage disease patient. Research based knowledge must be imparted to health care professionals in this regard. Establishment of institutions who care for these patients, invest in training of their staff, self identify the goals of palliative care, and promote ethical reflection is need of
In the mid 1990’s, palliative care was developed in recognition of the need to enhance the quality of life of seriously ill patients in order to achieve the best possible quality of life for patients. The Center to Advance Palliative Care and the National Palliative Care Research Center have been tracking growth in the prevalence of hospital palliative care services in the U.S. As per the research, even though the largest hospitals in the nation have palliative care services, still disparities in access to palliative care services have persisting. Where one lives matters, it highly depends on the geographical location of the patient. Therefore, the hospitals in the East South Central and West South Central parts of the U.S. are markedly less percentage of palliative care programs. Moreover, the not-for-profit and public hospitals are having the palliative care programs more than for-profit hospitals.
As I woke up in the morning to get ready for my home health day, I couldn’t help but be excited to try something new. I had tons of questions and couldn’t wait to explore what was behind the door of home health nursing.