3-8: Hospice Care and Grieving Flashcards
Describe the main characteristics of hospice care
- The idea behind hospice care is the acceptance of death in a positive manner, emphasizing the relief of suffering rather than the cure of illness. Hospice care is designed to provide palliative care and emotional support to dying patients and their family members.
- Hospice care may be provided in the home, but it is also commonly provided in free-standing or hospital-affiliated units called hospices.
- The patient’s psychological comfort is stressed. Patients are encouraged to personalize their living areas as much as possible by bringing in their own, familiar things.
- Hospice care is particularly oriented toward improving a patient’s social support system. Restrictions on visits from family or friends are removed as much as possible. Staffs are especially trained to interact with patients in a warm, emotionally caring way.
Identify the psychological advantages of home care.
Home care is much less expensive than hospital care, and patients can receive competent care at home, provided that there is regular contact between medical personnel and family members and that the family is adequately trained. In contrast to the mechanized and depersonalized environment of the hospital, the home environment is familiar and comfortable. The patient is surrounded by personal items and by loving family rather than by medical staff.
Discuss the challenges facing adult survivors.
Even after the patient dies, there is typically a great deal of work. Typically funeral arrangements must be made, burial and tombstone details must be worked out, family members who have arrived for the services must be housed and fed, and well-intentioned friends who drop by to express their condolences must be talked to. During the period of terminal illness, the survivor’s regular routine was probably replaced by illness-related activities. The survivor, then, is often left with lots of time and little to do but grieve, a psychological response to bereavement, a feeling of hollowness, often marked by preoccupation with the image of the deceased person, expression of hostility towards others, and guilt over death.
Identify the types of grief responses that are most and least adaptive.
Emerging evidence suggests that emotional avoidance and positive appraisals actually lead to better adjustment in the wake of a death. Bereaved adults who ruminate on their losses are less likely to have good social support, more likely to have higher levels of stress, and more likely to be depressed.
Indicate when it is best to begin helping a child cope with the death of a parent or sibling
In leading a child to cope with the death of a parent or a sibling, it is best not to wait until the death has actually occurred. Rather, the child should be prepared for the death, perhaps by drawing on the death of a pet or a flower to aid understanding. Some educators and researchers have maintained that one way to make surviving easier is to educate people about death earlier in their lives, before they have had much personal experience.
Hospice
An institution for dying patients that encourage personalized, warm palliative care.
grief
A response to bereavement involving a feeling of hollowness and sometimes marked by preoccupation with the dead person, expressions of hostility toward others, and guilt over death; may also involve restlessness, inability to concentrate, and other adverse psychological and physical symptoms.
