Hospice care is commonly known as professional end of life care. It is designed to help make someone comfortable during a very difficult period.
With end of life care comes a lot of preconceived notions. Many people have a bias against it, or don’t fully understand it. Due to this, a lot of people that could potentially benefit from hospice care don’t ever consider it as an option. Unfortunately, this can be detrimental to someone or even to an entire family.
This post isn’t exhaustive, but hopefully it can shed a bit of light on what hospice care is and how it can enhance the quality of life that you and your family experience.
There are various issues that someone might face during this time that hospice can help with. Pain is certainly one of them, but it’s not the only issue. Spiritual needs, social relationships, family, friends, and various other concerns can also be addressed during this time.
One of the big focuses of hospice care is palliative in nature. Palliative and hospice care are often used interchangeably but they are different. Hospice focuses on end of life care while palliative focuses on creating comfort. Dying is painful on some level for most people. Palliative care doesn’t just cover helping with physical pain, although it does do this. It also helps with the spiritual and emotional pain that can accompany the process.
It is important to remember that each individual is unique. We all have our own spiritual and religious beliefs, along with our own emotional and physical needs. High quality hospice care addresses these things on the individual level–helping each person and each family going through this very hard time to deal with it in the way that is best for them.
Legal issues can also be addressed in some cases during hospice. While most hospice caregivers are not able to partake in legal activities like helping to create a will, hospice staff can often help facilitate conversations and meetings with elder care attorneys. End of life planning, such as funeral and burial plans, can also be facilitated through hospice caregivers.
Hospice care tends to be under utilized. When comparing the number of people that use this type of care to the number of people who are eligible for it is remarkably low. It’s not right for everyone, but a good number of people would truly benefit from this service that haven’t considered it as a viable option yet. Hopefully, this blog helps a little.
In-home hospice care is also an under-utilized choice when it comes to end of life care. If you have questions about how Paradise In-Home Care can assist you or your family in this regard, we would be honored to walk you through what this might look like for your unique situation. This is never an easy time for families and we understand that. Our caregivers are professionally trained, but they are also kind, compassionate, and understanding.
If you would like to learn more about how this might benefit your family, please give us a call to talk more during a completely free consultation session.
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