End Of Life Care

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When end-of-life is nearing, individuals and their families often need to address psychosocial, spiritual, existential, financial, and legal concerns. Effective end-of-life care honors the patients’ wishes, facilitates communication, addresses financial concerns, minimizes stigma associated with treatment choices, attends to patient and family needs with cultural sensitivity, and offers supportive services, such as hospice referrals (Royak-Schaler, Gadalla, Lemkau, Ross, Alexander, & Scott, 2006).
Hospice is a care service for terminally ill individuals that excludes curative treatments and includes palliative care. 1,059,000 individuals died in the care of hospice in 2011 (Waldrop, n.d.). Ragan, Wittenberg-Lyles, Goldsmith, and Sanchez-Reilly …show more content…
Advance care planning includes learning about the types of end-of-life issues that may arise, considering what one’s preferences would be should a situation arise, making others aware of those preferences, and completing an advance directive (Waldrop, n.d.).
Completing an advance directive gives an individual an opportunity to express their wishes and have control over the way they are treated even if when they are no longer competent to make their own decisions. Morhaim and Pollack (2013) report that “more than 60% of individuals aged 18 years and older want their end-of-life wishes to be respected; however, only about a third of them had completed advance directives” (p. 8). They found the most common reason for not completing an advance directive to be that individuals were unaware of their existence (Morhaim & Pollack, 2013). These findings imply that it is necessary for health care providers and medical social workers to educate patients about advance directives and attempt to normalize discussions about death so that individuals can plan …show more content…
However, increased communication with one another and with healthcare professionals can support a more pleasant experience for patients and their families and help them feel empowered by their increased knowledge (Royak-Schaler, Gadalla, Lemkau, Ross, Alexander, & Scott, 2006). For example, finding out the patient is hospice appropriate and receiving information about hospice care allows a patient and their family to make arrangements for care based on the care they are looking for and their preferred location. Healthcare providers can increase patients’ feelings of empowerment by allowing them time to ask questions and providing them with information about their illness in a timely
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