Hospice Care at Home: What to Expect
March 23rd, 2022
By Danielle Andersen
Hospice care is specialized, comforting, end-of-life care that transitions from treating an illness to treating the symptoms.
Its main benefit is a complete focus on making the patient as comfortable as possible and providing a high quality of life in otherwise difficult circumstances, as well as providing comfort and relief to the patient’s loved ones and caregivers.
One of the great benefits of hospice care is that it can be administered in a wide variety of settings, including in a person’s private home.
Are you contemplating hospice care in a home setting and wondering what to expect? Read on to learn more.
- Hospice care allows patients and families to decide to a large degree what level of care they want. You can choose to receive services from one hospice discipline or from all hospice disciplines, such as nursing, social work, chaplain, home health aide, volunteers, music therapy, and others. Your care team will be a caring, respectful, understanding partner in the hospice journey.
- Hospice care can include a variety of services from trained, dedicated partners. This can include a social worker who provides emotional and social assessments of care and a hospice chaplain who will discuss spiritual care based on the patient's and family’s spiritual and religious beliefs. Volunteers may also be available by request and they can provide companionship and support for the family, even running errands and helping with other tasks. Needed medical supplies can also be delivered, including a bedside toilet, hospital bed, and oxygen, as well as any needed medications. Hospice care at Ethos can also include additional life enriching services like music therapy. Music therapy at Ethos is provided by a Board-Certified Music Therapist and helps establish or reestablish interpersonal relationships, promotes positive self-esteem through self-actualization, and uses rhythm to energize the patient while bringing order and calmness.
- Hospice care teams deliver individualized care plans. No two situations are the same, and your hospice team will consider input from a variety of people to develop a personalized plan of care. Team members then meet frequently to review the plan and make any revisions that are needed based on the patient’s condition.
- Hospice care can include routine home care, continuous home care, shorter-term respite care, and general inpatient care. Choosing to receive care at home can be based on a number of factors, including the level of the patient’s illness, the ability to manage pain outside of a hospital or nursing home, the ability of the main caregiver to provide what is needed at home, and the level of comfort the home setting will be able to provide.
The hospice team at Ethos provides caring, compassionate hospice care. Contact Ethos Hospice today to learn more and for a free care needs assessment
