Pain Management in Hospice Patients

Pain Management in Hospice Patients
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Pain Management in Hospice Patients
Hospice is a term used to define specialized care designed to provide support and comfort to families and patients whose illness no longer responds to medical interventions and death is unavoidable. Pain control and management are one of the vital objectives of hospice care. Nonetheless, patient management during their last weeks of life can be problematic since pain control is usually a problem (Ehrlich et al., 2019). Additionally, inadequate pain management techniques still exist despite implementing contemporary interventions such as periodic entreaties in healthcare and medical publications to improve pain control. Nevertheless, Hospice remains one of the best options for terminally ill patients whose life expectancy is six months or less. Hospice mainly focuses on supporting the patient's highest possible quality of life for the remaining time rather than curing the disease (Campbell et al., 2017). It is designed to uphold the quality of life, choices, and comfort of terminally ill people by supporting them and caring for their spiritual and psychological needs and those of their loved ones until their last minute of life.
The major concepts of hospice care include affirming the patient's life and death and dying as the normal and vital stage of the human life cycle. The second concept of Hospice is providing pain relief and other distressing and disheartening symptoms and integrating the spiritual and psychological aspects of care (Campbell et al., 2017). Lastly, Hospice seeks to offer an effective support system and framework to help patients and their families live the most quality and life until death and the family to cope with the patient's condition and the impending bereavement. Hospice care provides specialized care for an incurably sick patient by blending the best possible healthcare service and professional care to meet the needs for relief and comfort the ongoing patient even when cure is not possible (Guion et al., 2010). Hospice supplements but does not replace the existing medical services and facilities.
Additionally, the concept of providing pain relief and other distressing and disheartening symptoms is achieved through the establishment of a community of care for a terminally ill patient. This helps to ease both psychological and physical discomfort inherent in chronic diseases and death. Integration of the psychological and spiritual aspects of care also helps to appeal to the patients and their families to understand that death is not a punishment but God's will to transition His beloved children to the next glory (Hodiamont et al., 2019). The concept has a framework that seeks to help the bereaved families cope during the period by providing follow-up care after the death of the incurably ill patient. Hospice care is a people-oriented approach that considers family as a unit of care and upholding a caring interaction and relationship between humans (Guion et al., 2010). The program is dedicated to removing and preventing death's stigma, which precedes or leads to isolation accompanied by death.
The framework has incorporated nurses in the people and famil...