Caring for the Heart and Soul in the Last Years of Life
During the last phases of life, as well as during the end of life, quality and compassionate care become an essential component of the physical and emotional aspects of patients and their families diagnosed with terminal illnesses.
Emotional and spiritual care are about the inner battle, the fear, and the questions people have at this time in their life; it is about giving the patient something to look forward to, some way of gaining closure and finding peace. This compassionate support given at VistaRiver, is about making sure of patients well-being not only in a physical manner but also in mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Emotional Care
The foundation of Emotional care involves acknowledging and loving the mental and emotional part of an individual or patient. Approaching death causes anxiety, sadness, anger, or fear; people experience grief and loss or have doubts. Counselors, social workers, and trained hospice caregivers assist patients also in turning out their feelings to the care provider without prejudice. Emotional care involves consciously using one’s words and actions to facilitate these feelings, to listen to these feelings, and to ease one through this very significant stage in life.
Spiritual Care
Whereas Spiritual care is more on the aspects of the soul and metaphysical aspects of life, meaning, and purpose among others. And, unfortunately, people do not always follow these favorite quotes back to their spirituality, prosecutions, feelings, and beliefs that occurred at the end of life. Chaplains and spiritual advisors, other such employees, may give an individual one-on-one religious guidance and advice according to that person’s faith, religion, or culture. Patient and family caregivers derive comfort, pardon, and acceptance from prayer, meditation, reading of spiritual textual content, and meaningful communication as they make sense of their trajectory. It centers one on a feeling of belonging to a larger cause or cause greater than oneself ,may it be God, family, or the environment.
At VistaRiver, we also provide comfort to families as they deal with loss through anticipatory grief and dealing with the sick or elderly. Our hospice teams help families to be able to manage by offering them bereavement support, spiritual support, and reassurance during this volatile time. VistaRiver cognitive spiritual and emotional care enhances the honoring of a family’s loss and enables them to cherish or remember special moments thus fostering healing and unity in the absence of the person.
Counseling and spiritual support are other key areas of hospice service because they provide hope and healing mentally for the patient and their family during their last days. It also fosters the mind, heart, and soul and enables the patient to attain peace as well as provide families with solace and understanding in this sensitive stage. In a nutshell, this form of care turns the final stage of life into the best possible way people can spend their time – reflecting on their lives and building new relationships.
In the heartaches of families addressing end-of-life issues:
Hospice massage therapy is about presence. It makes the last stage in life sweet and gentle instead of painful and fearful. Therefore, it might be summarized that such a type of hospice massage therapy is a beautiful and caring approach. This is embracing the effect of touch as a means of transference, to give the last days of life an emotionally fulfilling process.
VistaRiver Hospice massage therapy provides comfort, relieving pain, lessening depressive feelings, and building relationships, it offers the patients a chance to become calm and quiet. This humanized care allows people to find comfort, not only during their last moments of life but also for their families providing them with care and presence in such a delicate stage of life.
Main Goals of Hospice Nurses
Symptom control and pain relief remain the main goals of hospice care nursing at VistaRiver. By virtue of being specialized, they are well-placed to address secondary problems such as chronic pain, nausea, shortness of breath, and anxiety hence keeping patients as comfortable as can be. As hospice nurses know the difficulties that patients who receive terminal diagnoses go through, they can offer medication and non-pharmacologic approaches that may be helpful to each patient. They make sure that those who are suffering have comfort from some of the symptoms experienced which makes them comfortable till they die.
Many critical care patients experience emotions of anxiety, fear, sadness, hopelessness, anger, etc, and need to be comforted. Not only do they attend to the medical aspect of the patients but during critical times and need a listening ear they are there to console us.
Secondly, hospice nurses at VistaRiver help the relatives of the patients, as they maintain the stress and anxiety that usually surround the terminal phase of the illness. Setting up constant contact and teaching, nurses support families to engage in the care process, providing guidance on important matters such as feeding, bathing, and giving out medications among others.
Hospice nurses are also the patient’s voice in the whole healthcare process. They assist in making a patient-centered care environment where the patient’s values, preferences and goals are honored and respected in every care given. While a patient may want to be at home with family or they may opt for a hospice, the role of a nurse includes ensuring that such an environment is safe, and comfortable and matches the patient’s desires.
At VistaRiver, hospice nurses offer more than medical care to their patients. All thanks to their intelligence, passion, and hard work. They give company, assurance, and respect to the patient’s family members. They visit the patient’s home to cater for their body needs as well as spirituality, to be part of the Hospice team and to support and help the family and the patient during one of the worst phases in life.