● Social workers evaluate and support caregiving resources, seek out community resources, assist patients and families with any legal or insurance concerns, and offer supportive counseling. ● Chaplains or pastoral counselors offer spiritual support to patients and family members, directed by the patient and family members’ needs, values, and beliefs. ● Bereavement counselors facilitate support groups, train bereavement volunteers, and design and distribute bereavement material to families.
Following the patient’s death, bereavement support is made available to caregivers, families, and friends for 13 months. ● Volunteer coordinators administer and develop the volunteer programs for each hospice. The coordinators recruit, train, and assign volunteers to hospice patients. ● Other members of the hospice team can include counselors, physical and occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, homemakers, and volunteers.
Case study 2 Instructions: Please read through the case study below and consider the questions that follow. You are talking to your clinical colleagues about end-of-life care for a patient. Someone states that hospice is the same as palliative care and that only private insurance pays for hospice care. 1. You know this statement is not accurate, and you clarify to your colleagues that: a. Hospice is a subset of palliative care. b. Hospice is a subset of palliative care and can be paid for by private health insurance, veteran’s benefits, the patient’s own income or family support, charitable donations, Medicaid, or from the Medicare hospice benefit. c. Hospice can only be paid for by private health insurance. d. Palliative care is the same hospice care but for those in a hospital setting. Explanation : Hospice and palliative care are not the same. Palliative care is the overarching care of those with serous or advanced illness, in which hospice is a subset. Hospice is not only paid for by private insurance. Other sources of payment for hospice services are veteran’s benefits, self-pay, charity, Medicaid, or the Medicare Hospice Benefit. 2. Any patient can qualify for hospice care as long as they have all of the following EXCEPT: a. An advanced illness. b. Certification of terminal illness by a physician. Explanation : Only patients who have been diagnosed with an advanced or life-limiting illness and determined by a physician to have 6 months or less to live can qualify for hospice care. Having a family is not part of the hospice certification process. POPULATION SPECIFIC PALLIATIVE CARE Pediatric palliative care c. A family to care for them. d. 6 months or less to live.
Pediatric palliative care is specialized medical care for children of any age that can be provided at any stage of a serious illness, along with treatment meant to cure. 23 Pediatric palliative care, similar to that for the adult population, also aims to meet the emotional, developmental, and spiritual needs of patients and Perinatal and neonatal palliative care The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 25 reports that births before 37 weeks gestation rose for the fifth straight year to 10.23% in 2019. This fact highlights the need for clinicians who can provide support and comfort to parents when their baby has a life-limiting illness or is born premature or stillborn. Geriatric palliative care Palliative care in the geriatric population is a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach focused on improving and maintaining quality of life for the patient’s remaining time. Patients with a primary diagnosis of cancer (32%) had the greatest number of days on palliative care, followed by primary diagnoses of circulatory/heart disease (13.2%) and pulmonary
their family members. 23 For example, psychosocial interventions can be offered to adolescents and young adults in the form of weekend retreats, transition services to help when they go back to school, sessions with social workers who provide counseling, and work with expressive arts therapists. 24 This specialized type of palliative care helps to guide the decision-making process to anticipate, prevent, and relieve suffering. Choices along the spectrum of this care include pregnancy termination (abortion) to full neonatal resuscitation and treatment. 26 disease (11.3%). 27 In addition to these diagnoses, dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, and dementia with Lewy Bodies, has been steadily increasing. 28 Regardless of etiology, pain is the most common complaint (50%) of palliative care patients. 28
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Book Code: MI24CMEB
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