Hospice Care and the Services It Offers

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Introduction:

Hospice care is offered to those who are nearing the end of their lives. Despite common belief, hospice care is available to anybody with six months or less to live, not just cancer patients who have chosen to forego curative therapy. You will
no longer receive curative or life-prolonging treatments when you enter hospice
care. Instead, you'll receive hospice care services that minimize discomfort
for as long as feasible.

Overview:

Hospice is a specialized medical care for people with life-limiting illnesses, diseases, or terminal conditions, intending to provide comfort and maintain the patient's quality of life (to the maximum extent feasible). As the end of life nears,
hospice care typically attends to all aspects of a patient's well-being, not
just the medical. This includes the patient's emotional, social, and spiritual
needs.

Additionally, hospice care can offer support, resources, and information to the patient's loved ones — particularly to a family member providing care-giving — both before and after the patient's death.

Even though hospice care services do not focus on finding a treatment for a terminal illness, it does not speed up the dying process or "help someone die." Helping terminally ill patients live as fully and pleasantly as
possible in their final days is at the heart of hospice care, which generally
supports life and views death as part of a natural process.

While most hospice care is delivered at the patient's residence, some patients may require short-term hospitalization. Additionally, hospice care does not include "round-the-clock" nursing care; hence, care-giving hospice care
services may be provided by family members, paid carers, or nursing home
employees.

Services for the Hospice-

• Medical care and nursing:

A hospice case management nurse will often visit a patient once every few days.

• Involvement of Doctors:

In most cases, a hospice patient's primary care physician will treat them alongside the hospice medical director.

• Health and social care advocacy:

A social worker is tasked with helping patients with their mental health and social issues.

• Psychological help:

Hospice patients and their families may benefit from nutritional services, pastoral care, spiritual guidance, and post-death bereavement counselling.

Aid for the sick at home:

Personal care aides visit patients twice or thrice weekly to assist with daily tasks.

• Medication:

Hospice care services often pay for all prescribed drugs, including those not directly related to the hospice diagnosis but used to manage pain and other symptoms.

• Instruments used in medicine

Hospice supplies the home with everything needed to make the patient feel safe, comfortable, and cared for. Medical equipment and supplies may include a hospital bed, a wheelchair, oxygen tanks, adult diapers, bandages, and latex
gloves, among other things.

Studies in the lab or other diagnostic procedures-

• Respite care:

Carer burnout and stress can be reduced or prevented with short-term assistance.

• Therapists:

Hospice care may include physical, occupational, and speech therapists.

• Supplemental Help:

Some hospices may offer additional assistance via volunteer and charity initiatives.

Conclusion:

Hospice care services are excellent for terminally sick patients with a six-month lifespan.  The sooner a patient can get hospice treatments, the more benefit they will get from it, even though
prognoses of this nature are only approximations. When a patient no longer
wants to try and find a cure for their ailment but instead wants to focus on
comfort, hospice care may be an option.