I have a good friend who is a local Hospice worker here in my home town in Georgia. Recently, she stopped by our local Boy Scout troop meeting to offer up some service projects for the boys. This particular project involved creating and painting birdhouses for her patients for 2016. In her presentation she touched briefly on Hospice, what it is and how they help.
A letter from one of our readers:
Dear George,
I read your blog every week to get a broader perspective on the issues that impact my profession. You talk about every specialized field that social workers toil in, but you have never mentioned Hospice.
Why not? Few people understand what we in Hospice actually do, and it would be wonderful if you could talk about the services that Hospice provides people in the last moments of life.
Thank you,
A Hospice Social Worker
Dear Hospice Social Worker,
You are right. I don’t know what I’ve been thinking. I have talked about juvenile justice, mental health, residential treatment, faith based services, child welfare, food banks and homeless shelters but have not mentioned Hospice Care. I apologize for this oversight and will rectify it immediately.
Most people don’t know exactly what Hospice care is, or who qualifies for it. Perhaps my journalistic oversight and the general public’s ignorance when it comes to Hospice care have the same cause. I think Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross touched on this cause when she testified at the first national hearings on the subject of death with dignity held in 1969.
“We live in a very particular death-denying society. We isolate both the dying and the old, and it serves a purpose. They are reminders of our own mortality.”
WHAT IS HOSPICE CARE?
Permit me to quote from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. No one could say it better.
Considered to be the model for quality, compassionate care for people facing a life-limiting illness or injury, hospice care involves a team-oriented approach to expert medical care, pain management, and emotional and spiritual support expressly tailored to the patient’s needs and wishes. Support is provided to the patient’s loved ones as well. At the center of hospice and palliative care is the belief that each of us has the right to die pain-free and with dignity and that our families will receive the necessary support to allow us to do so.
A BRIEF HISTORY
Hospice was the name first applied to specialized care for dying patients by physician Dame Cicely Saunders, who began her work with the terminally ill in 1948. She eventually went on to create the first modern hospice, St. Christopher’s Hospice, in a residential suburb of London in 1967.
Saunders introduced the idea of specialized care for the dying to the United States during a 1963 visit to Yale University.
In 1969, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published On Death and Dying, a book of 500 interviews with dying patients. The book became a best seller and began to put Hospice Care in the mainstream of medical practice.
By 1986, the Medicare Hospice Benefit was finally made permanent by Congress. Few people realize that Medicare pays for hospice when someone is terminally ill and requires medical attention for pain management.
Hospice is now an accepted part of the health care continuum.
HOW IT WORKS
Hospice focuses on caring, not curing, and in most cases, care is provided in the patient’s home. Hospice care also is provided in freestanding hospice centers, hospitals, and nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. Hospice services are available to patients of any age, religion, race, or illness. Hospice care is covered under Medicare, Medicaid, most private insurance plans, HMO’s, and other managed care organizations.
THE HOSPICE TEAM
The hospice team develops a care plan that meets each patient’s individual needs for pain management and symptom control. The team usually consists of:
Physicians, Nurses, Home health aides, Social workers, Clergy or other counselors, Volunteers, Speech, physical, and occupational therapists
MY APOLOGIES
I am sorry that I have never taken the time to inform our readers about Hospice. All of us, at one time or another, will probably need the help of Hospice. Now is the time to look into Hospice care in more depth so that we are ready to ask for help when the occasion arises.
