The Caregivers

02/22/2024

Pink is the color of strength, a color of conviction, a color of decision making.
~ Angad Bedi

02/20/2024

People don’t understand end of life care. People especially don’t understand end of life pain management. “People” includes lay persons, but also health care professionals.

Dying is not a medical event yet it is looked at and often treated medically. Dying is a social, communal, emotional event. Yes, there are medical facets to dying—nutrition, hydration, symptom control, and pain management. BUT they are not dealt with in the same way as it is for people who are going to get better.

Because of lack of knowledge, pain management, under Hospice care, has become an area of confusion and misunderstanding.

Dying is not painful—disease causes pain. There are diseases that have no pain associated with them. There are a lot of diseases that people die from that do cause pain, pain that is often difficult to manage. The type of medication, the adequate dosages, the changing disease pattern, tumor growth and location, all affect pain management at end of life.

To all of the above add fear and the late arrival of patients to the hospice program. Our culture, in the midst of an opioid crisis, has produced a lot of fear surrounding those people who legitimately need narcotics.

About a third of Medicare hospice patients are on service for seven days or less. Because of the late arrival family education becomes condensed into a few days and family absorption of the information we are trying to teach doesn’t always happen. As a result hospice ends up with families believing “hospice kills”, and “Mom was fine until Hospice gave her morphine”.

SO —— LETS EXPLORE THIS

Those patients that arrive onto the hospice program with seven days or less to live are in what I call “labor”. They… (for more see comment below)

02/19/2024

01/28/2024

Service concerning dementia:

Dementia doesn’t play by the rules of dying from a disease. It isn’t until a person can’t eat because they are choking or not swallowing that you can really predict that death is approaching. Care for someone with dementia is needed 24/7, not just for a few visits.

Also what often isn’t understood is that hospice help will vanish if the person does not decline “fast enough” – and many don’t. For people with dementia that come onto the hospice services, many are later discharged. When that happens all the wonderful services, medical equipment, medications, bathing visits, nurse and social work visits, and even volunteer visits STOP.

I have blogs about hospice service ending for dementia patients on my website: bkbooks.com Link in bio

01/19/2024

01/19/2024

01/18/2024

01/09/2024

01/08/2024