Direct, compassionate, hands-on care is provided to the patient by a
registered nurse who specialized in hospice care, gerontology, and pain
and symptom management. The care is regularly reviewed by the medical
director and a pharmacist and by the supervisory nursing staff to assure the
maximum comfort of the patient.
The nurse visits as often as necessary, assessing the patients'
needs and helping provide
sufficient information to
the caregiver to assure safe,
palliative care. More frequent
visits occur as needed.
Since our goal is to allow the end
of life to take its natural course, no active,
curative therapies are undertaken. In most cases a cancer patient would no
longer continue to undergo chemotherapy unless its objective was symptom
control. Hospice care neither hastens nor postpones death. However, pain
and other symptoms are rigorously treated to assure the patient is as comfortable
as possible, that his or her personality is not duller or altered by drugs,
social isolation or the environment.
The other members of the interdisciplinary team,
the social worker,
the chaplain,
the hospice aide, the volunteer,
the homemaker and the bereavement coordinator
all help with the continued assessment of the patient to assure
he or she has the best care available.
|
