Palliative Care

What Is Palliative Care?

Palliative care is a specialized medical and nursing treatment that manages relief from the symptoms, pain, side effects, physical and mental stress at any stage of a chronic illness. The primary purpose is to enhance the quality of life for both the patients and their families.

Who can benefit from palliative care?

Any person living with the following chronic diseases at any stage can benefit from palliative care.

  • Cancer
  • Dementia
  • Heart Disease/CHF
  • Alzheimer’s Disease
  • Respiratory Disease/COPD
  • Parkinson’s disease
  • Renal Disease/Failure
  • HIV/AIDS
  • Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
  • Stroke (CVA)
  • Chronic Liver Disease

Here at Hospice Assist, we help patients appreciate their medical treatment choices and care apart from improving their quality of life and managing their symptoms. We have organized palliative care services that assist older adults experiencing lots of general pain and disabilities very late in life.

We also provide palliative care together with curative treatment without depending on prognosis.

Hospice versus palliative care - are they the same thing?

Most patients who hear about palliative care ask whether it is similar to hospice care. You can use palliative care at any stage of a severe sickness, and at the same time, receive treatment, unlike hospice care. Patients under our hospice care can receive palliative care, but we mainly focus on patients’ last months of life.

Defining our Hospice Services

Hospice Assist provides hospice care to patients during the last six months of their life or less. If we realize our curative treatment is no longer an alternative, our professionals will always ensure your experience is as comfortable as possible.

Based on this understanding, you will understand that hospice care comprises of palliative care since the objective is to calm the patient for the remaining time before death.

At Hospice Assist, our professionals can handle both pain and symptom management at the patient’s home, hospital, or nursing home for maximum comfort.

What do our palliative care services involve?

Our palliative care involves medical prescriptions along with therapies and resources to give you full help and support while you cope with a chronic or terminal illness. Our team usually consists of professional staff such as a physician, nurse, and medical social worker.

You need to understand that palliative care is part of hospice care whose purpose is to keep patients comfortable.

Patients can obtain palliative care at any stage of their illness, while hospice care is only suitable for an end-of-life stage.

Palliative Programs and Services

For Hospice Assist palliative care to be successful, we have various programs and services with unique approaches and policies. These include:

A caring attitude

  • We provide empathy, compassion, and sensitivity that demonstrates concern to our patients.
  • We are concerned with all aspects of our patients’ sufferings, not only in the nursing, medical, or social work issues.
  • We utilize a non-judgmental approach in which personality, cultural origin, religious views, intellect, or any other individual factors do not bias our optimal care delivery.

Consideration of individuality

  • We practically categorize patients by their primary diseases, based on the similarity of the medical problems encountered, and issues that make every patient a unique individual.
  • These unique characteristics can greatly influence suffering, and we account for them when planning palliative care for individual patients.

Cultural considerations

  • Since religious, racial, ethnic, and other cultural influences can have a profound consequence on a patient’s suffering, we ensure to respect and treat patients in a culturally sensitive manner.

Consent

  • Before we give or withdraw any treatment, we ensure the consent of a patient or anyone with delegated responsibility is available for accountability.
  • Most patients desire to make shared decisions, although physicians tend to misjudge this. However, we usually discuss the appropriate treatment with our patients.
  • In most cases, satisfactorily informed patients will agree to the recommendations we make, and we avoid using medical jargon.

Choice of the site of care

  • We provide additional services to patients with a terminal illness by taking care of them at home whenever possible and if they desire.

Communication

  • We provide excellent communication from all our health care professionals attending to our patients, which is essential to many aspects of palliative care.

Care excellence

  • Our palliative care delivers the best achievable medical, nursing, and welcoming health care which is always available and suitable to cope with patients’ needs.

Consistent medical care

  • We provide reliable medical management that includes overall care plans that we establish and regularly review for each patient. This action reduces the possibility of sudden or unforeseen alterations, which may upset patients and their families. By doing so, chances of crisis or medical emergencies which can worry the patient and families will reduce.

Coordinated care

  • We have active members of our professional team to offer maximum care and support to patients and their families.
  • We hold care planning meetings, where all our team members contribute while allowing presentations from patients’ perspectives and their families.

Continuous care

  • Our palliative care aims to provide ongoing supportive and symptomatic care to referred patients until death. Most problems arise if patients get transferred from different palliative centers, but Hospice assists ensure the availability of all services for continuous care.

Crisis prevention

  • Our excellent care includes careful planning to avoid the emotional and physical emergencies that may occur with progressive sicknesses.
  • We are aware of clinical problems that may arise and prevent others from occurring through our appropriate management.
  • Usually, we forewarn patients and their families of possible issues, and emergency plans in place to reduce physical and mental distress.

Caregiver support

  • We offer full support for patients’ relatives with advanced diseases since they are susceptible to emotional and physical pain, especially if patients receive care at their homes.
  • We pay specific attention to patients’ needs since the success or failure of palliative care depends on our excellent caregivers’ ability to manage demands.

Continuous reassessment

  • We provide ongoing assessments for any patients with advanced illness, especially those that might experience growing and new clinical problems. These conditions may apply as much to psychosocial issues, just like pain and other physical symptoms.
  • Benefits of Hospice Assist Palliative Care
  • We always prioritize our patient’s goals, desires, and decisions first
  • We provide pain and symptom management
  • We help patients and families understand available treatment plans
  • The quality of life for our patients improves after using our services
  • Patients get full support and care including their families
  • We concentrate on body, mind and spirit wellbeing
  • Patients’ hospital visits will be minimal after using our professional services.

Benefits of Hospice Assist and Palliative Care’s approach

We have a team of professional care who will attend to you, and it doesn’t matter whether you are in hospital, home, or assisted living facility. Our team will consult you to discuss your needs.

We will provide support, guide, and educate you to ensure you make informed decisions concerning your care. We also offer assistance with spiritual and emotional support, advanced care planning, care coordination, and access to community services.

At-home Palliative Care

At Hospice Assist, we realize how stressful it for a life-limiting illness to affect you or your loved one. That is where our professional team is available to support your daily routines so that you can utilize your time with your family together.

We believe that obtaining care in your home is convenient, comforting, and minimizes stress when surrounded by memories and the people you love.

With the individualized support of our compassionate caregivers experienced in palliative care, you can have ultimate professional support whenever you need it.

Whether you are searching for a visiting caregiver or full-time caregiver, or additional extra help, we have the full range of palliative services care to assist you.

Our supportive care also includes anything you need for personal care, such as administering medication, support with pain management, cooking meals, among others.

With our professionally trained caregivers, we can assure you will receive advanced palliative care at the eleventh hour.

The following are the palliative services that we can provide to your home:
  • Support with pain management
  • Medical assessments, including checking and controlling common symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, anxiety, pain, etc.
  • We provide and companionship for your independent living at home
  • Medication support such as administering medication including more complex prescriptions and any other medical needs
  • Physical therapy along with rehabilitation needs
  • Regular housekeeping responsibilities
  • Running different errands such as medicine and food shopping
  • Providing emotional, social interaction, and spiritual support
  • Personal health care and assistance to healthy routines, such as continence care, assistance with bathing, toileting, and dressing
  • Help with the gentle backing moving around the home
  • Preparing relevant meals

Benefits of receiving palliative care in the home

  • It reduces extra costs for medical fees, hospital equipment, travel, etc.
  • You will receive maximum convenience at your home based on your schedule
  • Receive help medical, mental, and spiritual support while being around your loved ones
  • You stay comfortable at home in your familiar environments
  • It guides patients and their families experiencing difficult decisions on how to progress with care and treatment at home.

If you prefer to find out more about what our palliative care offers and the full support you can receive, kindly consult our welcoming and thoughtful team of advisors. We are here 24hours every day to discuss your options and help you meet our professional team.