KEY ELEMENT OF HOSPICE
Hospice care involves staff who are empathetic, good communicators and listeners, and who are interested in working with people who have life-threatening illnesses. Ongoing education about the dying process is also an important part of staff support.
Interdisciplinary team: Our Cuidado Casero Hospice Team consists of the patients Physician, our Nurses, Social workers, Home health aides, Clergy, Therapists, and trained Volunteers. Our team provides care for our patients by offering support based on their particular areas of expertise. Together, they provide comprehensive palliative care aimed at relieving symptoms and giving social, emotional, and spiritual support.
Pain and symptom control: Our main objective of pain and symptom control is to help our patient achieve comfort while allowing our patient to remain in control of his or her life. This means that side effects are managed to ensure that patients are as free of pain and symptoms as possible, yet still alert enough to make important decisions.
Spiritual care: Our Hospice care emphasizes the spiritual needs of patients and their families. Since people differ in their spiritual needs and religious beliefs, spiritual care is individualized to meet the patients’ and their family’s needs and may include helping our patients to look at what death means to them, to say good-bye, or to perform a specific religious ceremony or ritual.
Bereavement care: Our Bereavement Team comforts the family in the time of mourning following the loss of a loved one. We help the family through the grieving process. Our Bereavement Counselor provides support to survivors through visits, phone calls, and/or letter contact, as well as through support groups..
Volunteers: Hospice volunteers play an important role in planning and giving hospice care to our patients and their families. Volunteers may be health professionals or lay people who provide services ranging from hands-on care to working in the hospice office.
Coordination of care: The interdisciplinary team coordinates and supervises all care 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. This team is responsible for communicating between the inpatient facility, the home care agency, the physician, and other community professionals, such as pharmacists, clergy, and funeral directors.
Our Hospice Mission Statement
Our commitment is to provide professional, comprehensive, quality care to our patient and their families facing life limiting issues, in a timely manner, according to the individual case circumstances and Hospice concept.
Our management staff strives to design the appropriate level of treatment protocols and interventions according to the patient’s and family’s physical, spiritual, cultural and psychosocial needs including counseling and bereavement support.
We advocate quality of life choices and options and via Medicare benefits and or other alternative health care options to afford our clients comfort, compassion, and dignity; without discrimination of age, color, culture, national origin, sex, handicap or environment.
It is our contention that Hospice patients have the right to continue life to the fullest extent possible. We affirm the concept of hospice and palliative care respecting the patient’s decision making rights to continue choosing or refusing medical treatment and supporting the use of medication to alleviate pain; however we do not support or participate in an assisted suicide or euthanasia.
Our goal is to educate patient/families and the public about end of life issues and a quality end of life in the Hospice spirit.
Myths and Facts about Hospice
Myth: Hospice is where you go when there is “nothing else to be done.”
Reality: Hospice is the “something more” that can be done for the patient and the family when the illness cannot be cured. It is a concept based on comfort-oriented care. Referral into hospice is a movement into another mode of therapy, which may be more appropriate for terminal care.
Myth: Families should be isolated from a dying patient.
Reality: Hospice staff believe that when family members (including children) experience the dying process in a caring environment, it helps counteract the fear of their own mortality and the mortality of their loved one.
Myth: Hospice care is more expensive.
Reality: Studies have shown hospice care to be no more costly. Frequently it is less expensive than conventional care during the last six months of life. Less high-cost technology is used, and family, friends, and volunteers provide 90% of the day-to-day patient care at home. Additionally, patients eligible for Medicare or Medicaid will pay few out of pocket expenses related to their hospice care. Most private insurers also cover some or most hospice related expenses.
Myth: You can’t keep your own doctor if you enter hospice.
Reality: Hospice physicians work closely with your doctor of choice to determine a plan of care
