Hospice And Palliative Care

Dying has always been one of the most taboo topics in our society. At the end of life, you usually have two choices; to continue treatment for a terminal illness or to stop treatment. Almost 70% deaths happen at health related institutions (Centers for Disease Control, 2005) , so it’s important for healthcare professionals to know about the decisions that you have at the end of life. Hospice is a type of care that will focus more on managing your terminal illness instead of trying to cure it. This type of care offers help with the pain of the illness, along with emotional struggles. Hospice has been a rising choice for patients within the past couple decades. Just within 1994 and 2013, the number of hospice patients have spiked (Schencker,
According to World Health Organization, Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families who are facing problems associating with life threatening illnesses. Palliative care helps provide relief from the pain and other symptoms, such as having someone talk through the patient's mental condition or administering certain pain relief medication. This type of care also tries to enhance the quality of life, and they also tries to positively influence the course of the illness.
Hospice care is when the doctors will focus on caring, and not curing the patient. Hospices are made to manage the patient's pain and symptoms, provides needed drugs and medical supplies, and will coach the family on how to take care of the patient in their time of need. Hospice care is available to those who have a terminally ill disease and they have less than six months to live.
Within a Hospice, people can die in a comfortable place. This means that patients have the choice not having to have full of tubes, or other harsh medicines. While you’re in a hospital, this can very well happen to the patients. This could be the reason why people tend to choose hospice at the end of their lives. Hospices will try to focus on increasing the quality of their life, not the quantity of
The study participants consisted of five patients, five carers, and five community nurses from England.
Both patients in the hospice and their carers said it was important to them to discuss their end of life preferences, but knew that this was a very sensitive topic. On the other hand, community nurses said there were several barriers that would inhibit their end of life decisions. One being that discussing these preferences was not a primary goal of a care plan. The authors state that it’s about already knowing what they want at the end of their lives which is important, not having to discuss it at that time. (Holdsworth & King, 2011)
Within Lemaster’s study, he surveyed 128 middle aged adults and asked them a hypothetical question. The question imagined they only had only six months to live, and the doctor presented two options. To go into hospice care and make no further effort to treat your illness, or to undergo a surgery that has the chance to extending your life, but not cure your illness. The results of the study were that 38.4% of the participants would probably or definitely choose hospice within this scenario. While on the other hand, 61.6% of people would probably or definitely opt for the