What Should You Expect from Hospice Care?
If you and your senior have been wondering if hospice care can help her, it might be a good idea to investigate more about what this type of care can do for her. There are a lot of different ways that hospice is misunderstood, and those mistaken beliefs can impact how ready your senior might feel to even talk about the idea of hospice.
Hospice Isn’t Immediately “The End”
Hospice Care Arlington, VA: Hospice Care and Seniors
One of the main reasons that family members may avoid talking about hospice care is that there’s a fear that it means that this is immediately the end of their senior’s life. This isn’t the case, however. The care that your elderly family member needs is still available to her, but she may decide to opt out of aggressive curative treatments. Your senior’s needs are still going to be met and she’s not going to go without medical care.
Hospice Providers Assess Your Senior’s Needs
When your senior first opts for hospice, providers meet with her and her medical team to determine what her needs are. This is an important step so that your elderly family member does get the care and the therapies that she truly wants and needs during this time. That plan may change as your senior’s needs change, as can the types of therapists your senior sees.
Tools, Equipment, and Providers Start to Arrive
If your aging family member needs any medical equipment, like a hospital bed or an oxygen concentrator, those types of things will start to arrive fairly quickly. That helps to ensure that she’s able to get the care that she needs. She may also start to see other providers, like a social worker or occupational therapist. Each of these providers are there to help her in various different ways.
Your Senior Is Still Able to See Her Doctor
Just because your elderly family member is in hospice care, however, she can still see her doctor whenever she needs to. That’s another common misconception about hospice. In some cases, your senior’s doctor may even come to her home to check in with her. If your elderly family member wants to go back to curative treatments, she might even decide to leave hospice.
Comfort Is the Main Goal
It’s important to remember that the biggest goal of hospice is to help your senior to be as comfortable as possible. Because the main criterion is that your senior has less than six months left to live, the focus has to be on making the most of that time for her. The types of treatments and therapies your senior receives through hospice will be focusing on helping her to have the best quality of life that she can have.
It isn’t easy to know that your senior’s life is coming to an end. That’s why it’s so important to have options like hospice care that can help you and the rest of your family make the most of the time that your elderly family member does have left.
If you or an aging loved-one is considering Hospice Care in Arlington, VA please contact the caring staff at Butters Home Health Care today. (703) 371-2113