Hospice

Hospice care is a special kind of care that focuses on the quality of life for people and their caregivers who are experiencing an advanced, life-limiting illness.

Hospice care provides compassionate care for people in the last phases of incurable disease so that they may live as fully and comfortably as possible.

Who is on the hospice team?

• Nurses, care givers, doctors, specialists, aids, volunteers, social workers, counsellors, therapists, pastoral care.
• Hospice care normally steps in towards the last 6 months of the person’s life
• Hospice is not for everybody as every person has a choice
• Hospice workers are experts at controlling pain: with and without medication
• Care givers also keep the patients dry, clean and warm
• Care givers have to learn how to feed patients properly as they will not eat the same way as normal patients
• Care givers will have to learn about IV feeding tubes
• Care givers must learn about skin problems
• Patients will be come fearful of death and will want to take about death and dying
• Care givers need to learn how to take care of themselves
• Care givers need to learn how to include the family and friends of the ill person for them to let go peacefully

What is palliative care?

• Palliative care takes away the symptoms of the person’s illness whilst making them comfortable.

What exactly does palliative care mean?

Overview. Palliative care is specialized medical care that focuses on providing patients relief from pain and other symptoms of a serious illness, no matter the diagnosis or stage of the disease. Palliative care teams aim to improve the quality of life for both patients and their families.

This means that a person may live with the disease for years before moving into the final stage of life. Therefore, if you want to do palliative care you need to know about the kind of illness the person has and the kind of care you need to provide for that illness.

You will have to do professional learning to understand what to do to help the patient.