Hospice and Palliative care

Palliative care at the end of life involves meeting the physical, psychological, social, and practical needs of patients and caregivers. It is not limited to the short period of time when the person is moribund. Good clinical care can prevent or alleviate suffering for many patients at the end of life by assessing symptoms and providing psychological and social support to the patients and their families.

Palliative care is a philosophy and a way of caring that aims to enhance the quality of life of patients and their families facing problems associated with life-threatening illnesses. The objective of palliative care is the prevention and relief of suffering by symptom control by integrating the Health Sciences with the Humanities.

Nutrition in palliative care and at the end of life should be one of the goals for improving quality of life. It is important to address issues of food and feeding currently to assist in the management of troublesome symptoms as well as to enhance the remaining life. Cancer and its treatments exert a major impact upon physical and psychological reserves and at the end of life problems with appetite and the ability to eat and drink compound such impact.

Heart Disease identifies the need for patients with heart failure to have access to palliative care services for on-going support and advice; and for Renal Services goes further, listing as a quality requirement for patients near the end of life to have ‘a jointly agreed palliative care plan, built around their individual needs and preferences'.

Chronic illnesses are marked by fluctuations and variations over time. Individuals with chronic illness experience pain and other symptoms that are not always adequately managed. Their caregivers often must deal with enormous burden as the illness progresses. Palliative care can serve as an intervention to manage chronic illness, not just at the end of life but also in the early phases of illness.

Palliative care can address a broad range of issues, integrating an individual’s specific needs into care. The physical and emotional effects of cancer and its treatment may be very different from person to person. For example, differences in age, cultural background, or support systems may result in very different palliative care needs.

Palliative care is a special type of medical care that focuses on treatment of symptoms people may have when they are living with a chronic (longstanding) illness, such as cancer or heart failure. It is often compared to the hospice care that is offered to terminally ill people. In palliative care, the goal is to provide the best quality of life possible even if someone is not terminally ill.

Palliative care psychiatry focuses on the emotional and social issues that arise in someone with an advanced illness, often in someone who is receiving hospice or palliative care (hospice being one end of the palliative care spectrum, which offers enhanced palliative care to patients with a short prognosis).

Oncology deals to the patient of cancer for medically treatment. The patients suffered so much by the medical treatment from side effects and emotional issues. Palliative care provides professional treatment and provide the treatment against the symptoms, their side effects, and emotional problems. Palliative care pushes upward to provide mentally fit.

Pediatric Palliative care is specific medical care for children with serious sicknesses. Its attentions on providing relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress of a serious illness’s diagnosis of any kind. The aim is to progress in superiority of life for both the child and the family.

Crew of doctors, nurses and other specialists generally provide the Pediatric Palliative care who works with a child’s other doctors as an additional deposit of support. It is suitable at any age and at any stage of sickness and can be provided laterally with treatment meant to cure.

‘’Nursing is primarily assisting the individual in the performance of those activities contributing to health and its recovery, or to a peaceful death’’ Virginia’s definition of Nursing. The role of Nursing in palliative care is to provide relief for physical symptoms, achieving quality of life, maintaining an independent patient, relief for mental anguish and social isolation, family support, reducing isolation, fear and anxiety and good death or dying well.

Emergency medicine has progressively taken a central role in the early execution of palliative care. Patients with a serious disease are likely to find themselves in an emergency section at some point along their course of illness, and they should expect to receive high-quality palliative care in that setting. Common integration of palliative care into the day-to-day practice of emergency medicine, however, is often exposed by the demands of many competing priorities.

Spiritual care is an essential domain of palliative care, which focuses on the needs of the whole person and their family. Spirituality is a fundamental element of human experience. It includes the character’s search for meaning and determination in life and the experience of the superior. For some people spirituality can be largely faith based, for others it may be their relationship with nature or the profound connections they have with their people. Spirituality may or may not involve devout opinions.

Occupational therapy practitioners play an important role on palliative and hospice care teams by identifying life roles and activities (“occupations”) that are meaningful to patients and addressing barriers to performing these activities. Unlike other health care providers, they consider both the physical and psychosocial/ behavioral health needs of the patient, focusing on what is most important to him or her to accomplish, the available resources and support systems, and the environments in which the patients want and can participate.

Palliative care and Rehabilitation medicine share the most common goals. They strive to maximize physical function and emotional well-being to the highest extent possible given the nature of the underlying disease process. Many patients with End-Stage disease experience symptoms and functional losses that diminish their quality of life.

Palliative care professionals say the problems that lead to supported dying requests can usually be dealt with in ways that do not accelerate death. They promote quality of life and reject the idea of “dying on demand”. Supporters of aided dying argue that palliative care cannot be effective in every case. To them, the important thing is to respect independence and self-determination of choice.

Palliative care plays an important role to manage the multiple symptoms commonly experienced by the chronically ill or dying patients remains a primary goal of Palliative care nursing. There are so many ongoing clinical assessment, reassessing pain and medication side effects, developing pain management expertise and advocating for change if the patients does not get relief from the prescribed regimen.

Palliative care that improves the quality of life and quality of care for patients with life threatening or life-limiting sickness and their families through the prevention and relief of suffering, communication about goals of care, and early identification and assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.

Hospice and Palliative Care is the active, expert and gentle care and support of individuals living with a serious, progressive illness when cure is not expected. This is the holistic in nature – caring for the ‘’whole’’ person and their family. The aims of hospice and palliative care are to support and improve quality of life for those in the last stage of living, and their families. This offers social, emotional and spiritual support to individuals and families through members of an interdisciplinary team including physicians, nurses, social workers, home care nursing, home support, Hospice staff and volunteers, and other disciplines. Palliative care may be offered for people with illnesses, such as like:Cancer, Heart disease, Lung diseases, Kidney failure, Dementia, HIV/AIDS, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) etc.

Complementary therapies are becoming increasingly used during the final stages of a condition, to enhance palliative or end-of-life care. These aim to help the patient cope with pain and the fear associated with the unknown, further decline, and death. These therapies include are designed to restore the body/mind balance and include things like aromatherapy, guided relaxation and imagery, music therapy, and therapeutic touch. They are thought to have a positive effect when it comes to helping the patient fall asleep, easing muscle tension, enhancing the effect of pain medication, enhancing rest, and relieving anxiety.