The Role of a Hospice Nurse
Hospice nurses have a crucial role especially when it comes to the tender times in peoples’ lives when we need both physical and medical care as well as moral support not only for the patient but for the entire family also. Hospice care is not strictly about pain control, although pain is one of the most common symptoms; it is about preserving quality and integrity in the final months of life for a person with a terminal disease.
At VistaRiver, the role of hospice nurses as essential and active participants on the hospice team is to be the caregivers that accompany a patient through offering their steady, gentle, and reassuring hands.
How Does a Hospice Nurse Comfort a Patient
Hospice nursing is arguably one of the most caring professions that has at its core, patient centered care. Traditional medicine always aims at treatment and healing and may at some times overshadow the quality of life part and may just seek to provide a cure while hospice nurses are more aggressive in trying to see that the last days of the patient are as comfortable as possible. They do this for people suffering from cancer or other terminal conditions, in managing pain, and symptoms, and providing emotional support for the patients as well as creating a friendly atmosphere.
Hospice nurses make independent decisions based on their patient’s condition and cooperate with physicians, social workers, chaplains, and aides as part of hospice workers’ teams to develop care plans that concentrate on physical as well as emotional needs that the patient has.
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.