Choosing whether to enter hospice is a big decision. End-of-life choices are always hard, and we often look to friends, relatives and spiritual advisors to help us make these decisions. When your family is weighing this type of decision, it’s helpful to know the guidelines of the facility you are considering. The team at Suncrest Home Health and Hospice of Chicago wants prospective patients to have all the information they need about our services, in order to help make their choice easier.
Who Chooses Hospice?
Hospice care is end-of-life care for terminally ill patients. In order to be considered eligible for hospice care, patients must have a referral from a physician that indicates they are expected to live six months or less.
Hospice care is not just for patients that have cancer, some other diagnosis include COPD, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Kidney Disease, heart disease, and many other diagnosis.
Hospice patients is for any patient that has been diagnosed with a prognosis of less than six months, some patients may live past the six-month prognosis but can continue with hospice as long as the meet physician prognosis.
Is Hospice Care Provided at Home or in a Facility?
Hospice care can be provided either at home or in a facility. Some hospice care facilities are dedicated completely to hospice care, while others exist in designated spaces inside of hospitals or long-term care facilities.
Placing a family member in hospice can be a gut-wrenching decision, and for some families, this decision is made easier by arranging for the patient to get hospice care at home. Depending on the patient’s level of awareness, they may be more comfortable in their last days if they are in familiar surroundings. Additionally, keeping the patient at home might be easier for the family. Especially if the patient is near death, it is easier for family members to spend time by their bedside at home than it is to travel back and forth to a different location. Even if the patient has weeks or months to live, it can make family members feel better to have their loved one at home, where they have constant access to them.
However, this scenario is not always practical. If the patient is a widow or widower, they might be depending on their children for assistance and supervision, and these children may not be able to stay home from work for an extended period of time to provide this supervision. Further, having a hospice patient at home can create an extra burden on family members who need their rest, especially if the patient is up at night often or has frequent needs. And lastly, it may be too difficult for some family members to cope with watching their loved one die at home.
Our Chicago-area hospice nurses and social workers can meet with prospective patients and their families at their homes, evaluate the surroundings and make recommendations regarding what we believe is best for proper hospice placement. One consideration may be the inconvenience of waiting for a hospice bed to become available for the patient. However, we can discuss with you the possibility of providing hospice care at home and then transferring the patient to a facility when a bed becomes available.
Hospice Provides
The hallmark of hospice care is the absence of lifesaving medication. It is a common, but erroneous, belief that we give no meds in hospice, but this isn’t true. Pain-relieving medications are the most important medications we provide. Hospice will use other medications to manage any symptoms the patient may be experiencing.
When a patient enters hospice, they have discontinued lifesaving treatments but may continue treatments for symptom control. The hospice team is going to be focused on comfort and quality of care rather than quantity. During hospice care there will be spiritual counseling and psychosocial counseling available for these difficult conversations.
Can You Change Your Mind After Entering Hospice?
Because entering hospice is such a serious decision, you may wonder what happens if the patient has a change of heart. Of course, anyone at any time can choose to leave hospice. As a family member or a friend, it is helpful to understand the consequences of a patient choosing to leave — or reenter — hospice.
Depending on the patient’s condition and how long they have been in hospice, returning to taking lifesaving medications may provide much less benefit than the patient believes. For instance, if the patient has cancer and had been taking chemotherapy drugs, stopped because of how sick the drugs were making them and then returns to taking them, the benefit could be fairly low, as the cancer has likely progressed in the interim.
This is a difficult time, because no one wants to discourage a patient from choosing to either take, stop taking or resume taking lifesaving drugs, because this is an extraordinarily personal decision. However, it is important that the patient have all the relevant information so that they can make the best decision for them. Often it is helpful to have their doctor weigh in on this decision.
Additionally, there are a few practical considerations to leaving hospice. One is that if the patient is in a hospice facility and leaves the facility, their bed may not be immediately available to them should they want to return. However, if the patient is receiving hospice care at home — or is willing to — it is easier to start and stop services.
On very rare occasions, hospice patients recover enough to leave hospice. Even with the assistance of medication, end-stage cancer remission is uncommon, and the spontaneous remission of any disease is even less common. However, part of the mystery of life is that we cannot often predict with any certainty when the end will come, and thus we must make the best decisions we can on our own.
Suncrest Home Health and Hospice of Chicago
If you live in the Chicago area and are interested in learning more about hospice care, contact the team at Suncrest Home Health and Hospice of Chicago. We care for many hospice patients daily, whether at home or in a facility, giving patients meds; bathing, dressing and feeding them; changing dressings and bed linens; and providing other care as necessary. Our certified nursing assistants, hospice nurses and social workers are compassionate professionals skilled in helping families through difficult times. We offer care, support, advice and guidance for patients and families coping with end-of-life decisions.
The decision to enter hospice care is never irreversible, and we support patients in making the best decisions for them about their care. We encourage consultation with doctors, nurses, LicSWs, spiritual advisors and anyone whose opinion is valuable and important to the patient.
Contact us today with any questions you have about hospice care in Chicago.
