...Running head: PREPARATION FOR DYING AT HOME 1 PREPARATION FOR DYING AT HOME 1 Preparation for Dying at Home Barbara A. O’Brien Liberty University Abstract Despite the tragedy and grief, dying at home is quite an accomplishment. Dying at home is intense, intimate, stressful and excruciatingly exhausting. Yet, more and more people are choosing to die at home. The preference to die at home requires a significant amount of preparation and education. This paper explores the areas of physical (medical), financial and emotional preparation. Palliative care options such as hospice will be explored. Additionally, this paper will provide an educational awareness plan for...
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...Many experience depression. Family Caregiver Alliance (as cited in McMillan et al., 2006) has estimated that over fifty million Americans assist a family member with a disability or illness on a regular basis. Of these ill patients, many require extensive care from family members. Caregivers of cancer patients especially experience very high stress levels. They are often burdened with physical exhaustion, emotional distress, and financial worries from loss of time at work to care for their loved one (Emanuel & Emanuel, as cited in McMillan et al., 2006). The purpose of the study I reviewed was “to determine whether hospice plus a coping skill training intervention improved family caregivers’ quality of life, burden, coping, and mastery, compared with hospice plus emotional support and usual hospice care (McMillan et al., 2006, p. 214)”. To participate in the study, caregivers had to be caring for adult cancer patients, both had to give consent, both had to be able to read and comprehend English, both had to have achieved at least a sixth grade education, and both had to achieve a minimun score of seven on the Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (McMillan et al., 2006). This questionnaire is a tool used to assess organic brain deficits in the elderly. It measured orientation, remote memory, and ability to complete a serial subtraction task (Pfeiffer, as cited in McMillan et al., 2006). Subjects were excluded if the caregiver was also being treated for cancer...
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...Hospice Care When a loved one dies, the place of death may have important implications for families’ experience of death and subsequent bereavement, although it may not be the sole factor impacting this experience. (Siden, 2008) Home hospice helps the entire family and family members are encouraged to take an active role in providing supportive care to the patient. In doing so, the family experiences fewer feelings of helplessness and the patient is not relying solely on strangers for all of his/her care. The goal of hospice care is to achieve the best quality of life not only for patients, but also for their families. Enabling death at home, if this is the patient's choice, is often seen as part of ensuring the best possible quality of life. There are hospitals which have a hospice program to give terminally ill patients access to support services and other health care professionals. Many hospitals have a special hospice unit. These units provide intensive medical and psychological support to patients who need aggressive symptom management. Home hospice provides end-of-life care in a setting which is familiar to the patient and their family therefore making their final days more comfortable and beneficial to all. Excellent end-of-life support, in the location of choice, is in itself, an essential aim but my goal is to determine which choice provides the best care for the patient and the family. Palliative care It has been noted that the most common answer to the question...
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...nurse to help improve the quality of life for the patient and offer support to the family during this dying process. The nurse must respect and honor the patient. To improve the quality of life for Mrs. Thomas, education on disease process and end of life events is of the utmost importance. Hospice is a specialty offers support and services to the terminally ill (“What is hospice,”). Not only does hospice provide services, but also a wealth of education for the patient and family. Along with education, symptom management and spiritual support are also offered to improve Mrs. Thomas’s quality of life. Pain control and symptom management can also improve the quality of life in this case. After adequate education is received, Mrs. Thomas may not be as reluctant to receive pain medication. As pain relief is obtained, the patient may enjoy more of time with her husband and may even return to church for social interaction thus increasing her quality of life. The third way to improve Mrs. Thomas’s quality of life is by emotional and spiritual support through a social worker and chaplaincy. The social worker can help guide Mrs. Thomas to support groups for herself and her spouse (What is hospice,”). Support groups provide personal contact and a place of escape for patient and family. Chaplain services offer spiritual support during this difficult time...
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...all sick through spirituality (Amitabha Hospice Service Offering Kindness & Clarity, 2000). Death rates for mother and children's were tremendously high, fewer people lived over the age of 40, and most of every resource was devoted to survival. Christianity began to spread in Europe and churches or monasteries which lead to the intake of sick and the disabled. Women who were well off or lost their husbands volunteered to work in the monasteries as care takers. During Medieval times during crusades, travelers discovered places of refuge with the nunneries as well as the monasteries. During the development of medicine and hospitals, the ill patients found treatment at these facilities but as diseases formed and the fear of outbreaks developed family members preferred for the care to take place in the home. The community would then prepare food and provide clothing for the individuals families who were taking care of them. The aftermath of WWII helped healthcare services provide better medicine for the ill which saved a lot of lives. The name hospice originated from the care of the terminally ill patients by Mme Jeanne Garnier and founded The Dames de Calaire in Lyon, France during 1842. Hospice care is an important part of health care usually according to (NHPCO - National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, 05/1). Dame Cicely Saunders continued the hospice care services as she began her duties and established a hospice named St. Christopher's in the suburban...
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...10/08/2012 Professor Lenore Cariaga Healthcare Support Services Summary Paper Hospice Care Description of the Organization 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 emotional, social, and spiritual needs as well as medical symptoms as part of treating the whole person. Hospice programs generally use a multidisciplinary team approach, including the services of a nurse, doctor, social worker and clergy in providing care. Additional services provided include drugs to control pain and manage other symptoms; physical, occupational, and speech therapy; medical supplies and equipment; medical social services; dietary and other counseling; continuous home care at times of crisis; and bereavement services. Although hospice care does not aim for cure of the terminal illness, it may treat potentially curable conditions such as pneumonia and bladder infections, with brief hospital stays if necessary. Hospice programs also offer respite care workers, people who are usually trained volunteers...
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...Hospice Care Hospice Care Hospice is a medical organization that helps care for patients who are near the end of life from a terminal illness. This is a group of professional health care workers that are there to take care of the patient and the patient’s family. They work as a team to make sure these patients have as less pain and problems dealing with the end of life as possible. They provide the family of the patient with the knowledge of how the dying process works. They will inform the patient and family stage by stage of what is happening. They will let the family members know the details of the sounds a person may make when the process begins so the family is well aware of what is going to happen. Although hospice helps the family deal with the loose of the patient, hospice caregiver’s main focus is to make the patient feel comfortable, by easing any discomfort possible during the process of dying. They also help the patient pass with as much dignity as possible. Hospice can start caring for a patient as early as six months, the physician of the patient has to recommend for services to be start. A patient may be on hospice for as little as a few days, no matter the length the services and care given is always important for the patient and family. Most of the patients on hospice are older, however hospice services will be provided to any patient in their final stages of life young, middle age or old. Many patients dealing with the final stages of their illness receive...
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...health care socially, economically, and ethically. As a consultant of StateServ Home Medical, the writer will present the importance of accurate delivery of a health information technology tool that will allow healthcare professionals Internet access to schedule the ordering and delivery of DME (durable medical equipment). This electronic ordering system will improve the hospice organization’s efficiency. The consultant’s description of StateServ Home Medical will reveal the program to significantly shift the telephone ordering process to Internet access. That leaves the hospice organization’s nursing staff with more time to mange patient care cases. In the ongoing evolution of adapt technologies, hospice organizations should factor integrated durable medical equipment ordering systems that will serve at enhancing patients’ level of care and lower delivery cost. This latest technology will also serve as a maintenance control function which results in complete and accurate billing procedures that will capture active supply use by patients. StateServe Home Medical network services will allow the hospice organization to continue to work alongside their local durable medical equipment providers and gain access to StateServ Home Medical’s real-time order management and in-depth utilization review reports. StateServ Home Medical’s main focus is serving mainly hospice organizations nationwide. DME (durable medical equipment) ordering technologies...
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...Review of Literature Essay When a person is placed on hospice, it is generally seen as a comfort measure instead of a curative measure (Villet-Langomarsino 2018). Pain management of the hospice patient is of great importance because it is one of the few things that can be done during the end stage of life when treatment of a disease is no longer desired. Pain is a common symptom in health care and should be one of the easiest to treat due to its popularity, but unfortunately it is not. Since pain is so unique to person, assessment and treatment must be custom tailored to each patient. The problem with pain management is its specificity to each person and disease plus the numerous ways to treat it. Without one specific roadmap of treating...
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...Hospice Care HCS 212 December 12, 2012 Hospice Care Hospice is a very special type of healthcare that offers comfort and support for patients and families that are facing a terminal illness. The focus is put on making a patient comfortable with a quality of life instead of a cure. The main goal is for a patient to have comfort and free of pain, with the hope that they will live each day as fully as possible, allowing people to live the remainder of their life with comfort and dignity. Hospice services are available for people that can no longer benefit from curative treatments, and are different from other types of care. You may require more help than you are used to which can be both good and bad. The life expectancy for these individuals is normally six months or less, but sometimes they do live past six months. These patients are encouraged to try and live as much of a normal life as possible and to the fullest as possible as well, they do not have to confined to a bed or stay at home 24/7. A multi-disciplinary team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, dietician’s, hospice certified nursing assistants, clergy, therapist and bereavement counselors as well as volunteers who all work together as team to address the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social needs of each and every family member. This care is provided in their own home no matter what age...
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...that all measures should be taken to help prolong their loved one’s life. No all deaths are the same. Some people pass away peacefully, while others will have difficulty transitioning through the end of life stages and have difficulty with pain. Individual beliefs, religions and cultures are also a large piece of what we must consider in order to plan the appropriate care for the dying patient. Unfortunately, in many instances, patients usually have not had discussions regarding end of life preferences with their doctors, caregivers, and family members. This sometimes leads to decisions being made at the end of life that are not the treatment preferences of the dying person. Hospice is a philosophy that allows nature to take its course, with focus on the greatest quality of life until the end of life. The goal is to provide physical, emotional, and spiritual comfort to the patient as well as provide support to the caregivers. Educating caregivers and families should be done so that they have an idea of what to expect during the dying process and to teach them about the body’s natural way of shutting down. Families will also sometimes insist on feeding the patient or giving them intravenous fluids, not realizing that these actions can also interfere with the natural process and can sometimes cause more pain and discomfort to the patient....
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...Hospice Care: Culture Blind and Patient Centered Put into place more than seven decades ago by a physician named Dame Cicely Saunders in London, England as a way to provide quality care centered around the terminally ill, hospice care was introduced in the United Stated in 1963 with a visit from Saunders to Yale University (National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, 2016). This patient centered method of care was put into place as a means of allowing terminally ill patients dignity, comfort, and support during the final days of their lives. It is the intention of this paper to provide an overview of hospice care in America, and how patient care can be provided in such a manner as to provide care to all cultures and religious beliefs...
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...chronic disease patients that may benefit from Hospice for end of life care. In 2015, 1, 381, 182 Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in hospice (National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, 2016). Hospice was designed to improve the experience of dying for the patient with the help of interprofessional care. The design also included improving the healthcare costs associated with the end of life (Stevenson, 2012). Eligibility for hospice is based on a physician documented life expectancy of six months or less. There are four levels of care are covered under the Medicare benefit for hospice. These include in home care, general inpatient care which covers symptom management such as pain control, continuous care,...
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...Hospice Creation of Hospice Hospice care is 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. The term “hospice” ( from the same linguistic root as “hospitality”) can be traced back to medieval times when it referred to a place of shelter and rest for the weary or terminally ill on a long journey in 1948 (History of Hospice Care, 2012). The name of the physician was Dame Cicely Saunders who treated the terminally ill and eventually went on to create the first modern hospice, named St Christopher’s Hospice, in a residential suburb of London. (History of Hospice Care, 2012). Ms. Saunders introduced the idea of specialized care for the dying to the United States of America during a 1963 visit with Yale University. Her lecture, given to medical students, nurses, social workers, and chaplains, about the concept of holistic hospital care, included photos of terminally ill patients and their families, showing the dramatic differences before and after the symptom control care (History of Hospice Care, 2012). Ownership In 2010, there were over 5000 hospice programs nationwide (Facts and Figures: Hospice Care in America, 2012). The majority of these facilities are freestanding agencies constituting 58 percent of all hospice centers (Facts and Figures: Hospice Care in America...
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...giving to the fact that African Americans are less likely to pursue hospice care at the end of their lives. This paper will first examine the case for hospice and why it is a valuable resource and one that is consistent with Christian values. Then, I will survey the data regarding African Americans and hospice, particularly looking at considering what the main factors are for the racial disparity of hospice users. I conclude the main factor is distrust for the healthcare system as a result of centuries of medical abuse, experimentation and neglect. In light of this racist healthcare history, I will consider theologically what a Christian response to the racial disparity in hospice care is by using...
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