Web Resources
Advance
Directives
Planning
for End-of-Life Care
Early
Hospice Referral
Patient's
Bill of Rights
Preparing
for Death
|
The
Importance of Early Hospice Referral
An early referral to Keystone Hospice helps to
ensure adequate time for effective coordination of care allowing for the
best possible experience for all involved. Early referral allows the Keystone
Hospice team to:
• prevent pain and family exhaustion.
• help the patient and family with decisions about care.
• teach the family how to care for the patient.
• order necessary medical supplies and equipment.
• manage medications to keep the patient pain and symptom-free.
• provide extended bereavement support to assist the family in dealing
with grief and loss issues.
Signs and Symptoms of Appropriate Hospice Referral
The desire of the patient and family for future
care and treatment is of key importance in determining hospice appropriateness.
Issues such as advanced supportive care and artificial feeding should
be openly discussed prior to hospice admission. As the focus is on pain
management and symptom control, artificial feedings and IV antibiotics
are generally not utilized in the symptom control of hospice patients.
However, the need of each patient and family are assessed individually.
Hospice is appropriate
when:
• The patient has a terminal, life-limiting diagnosis with life
expectancy
of 6 months or less as determined by a physician.
• The patient and family express the desire for no further aggressive
intervention of the terminal illness.
• The patient and family desire not to be hospitalized or to receive
emergency services, including CPR and 911.
These symptoms generally indicate terminal illness in patients
with end-stage disease:
• compromised ambulation or non-ambulatory.
• compromised mental status – confusion, disorientation, decreased
responsiveness.
• anorexia, weight loss of 10% in past few months.
• recurrent infections – sepsis secondary to decubitis ulcers,
skin breakdown, UTI’s.
• increasing somnolence, weakness, fatigue.
• failure to thrive.
• change in functional abilities.
• change in cognitive abilities.
• history of specific decline in condition. |
