Adding Life to Days Knowing the invaluable service and impact - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Adding Life to Days

Knowing the invaluable service and impact hospices have had elsewhere, many citizens of our district have dreamed that some day we would have such a facility in our own community.

To provide compassionate, holistic care to those nearing the end of their physical life.

To support, educate and empower hospice clients and their families, through networking, public and professional education, advocacy, and community involvement.

Hospice care's approach is holistic, helping those who require short term admission to bring symptoms under control in a peaceful, caring, and loving environment.

"A society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members."

Hospice care provides physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological and social support to people who are approaching death, and to their families.

It involves expert pain and symptom management to relieve physical suffering and to enable people to live as well as possible as they near life's end.

Multidisciplinary care teams include physicians, nursing staff, spiritual care providers, social workers, volunteers, family and friends. This care can be provided at home, in hospitals or nursing homes, or in a specialized professional hospice facility.

THREE PROFESSIONAL RESPONSES TO THE QUESTION - WHAT IS HOSPICE CARE?

1) “The provision of hospice care centers on addressing symptoms and improving the quality of life. So essentially, the difference is that euthanasia is about utilizing death as a solution to suffering while hospice care is about addressing the quality of living until death occurs.”

2) “Hospice organizations do not provide euthanasia. Hospice provides care, education and support as the end of life approaches; hospice associates embrace death as a natural part of the life-cycle, but they do not hasten it.”

3) “Hospice teams provide care for the patient throughout the final stages of disease. Hospice work also focuses on supporting the family of the patient. Treatment goals for the patient focus on the management of symptoms, such as pain, anxiety, shortness of breath.

… The medications prescribed for hospice patients do not hasten death. The medications given do not cause death to occur quicker or sooner. This is often a misconception of what hospice does. Hospice focuses on keeping the patient as comfortable as possible by controlling or minimizing the negative effect of the patient's symptoms.”

How Did Heartland Hospice Moose Jaw Come to Be?

A Voice of Need in the Community Arlene Kolosky June 15, 2013

Community Interest Evolves Board of Directors Established - Not for Profit Status

A Website Created

May 7, 2014 Held a Public Forum Set up for 50 Over 150 Showed Up

Established Friends of Heartland Hospice Moose Jaw Numbering around 175 Expanded our networking activity

Explored Our Options - Stand Alone Service? - Integrated Service? What can we learn from others?

Recognize the obvious need to collaborate with the Health Region and its Palliative Care Team & Palliative Care Volunteer Program

Research suggests that the ratio of suites should be 7 per 100,000 population. Therefore Moose Jaw = 3 (2.5) suites Serving the district = 4 (3.5) suites

Ask what we can do in the meantime “How can we help you?” - Music therapy - volunteers ?

Collecting Stories NARRATIVES (Tell Us your story) I firmly believe that palliative patients should be managed at home whenever possible, but there are always going to be those cases when that is not the best option. The medical community must acknowledge that dying is just as important as birthing in the cycle of life. We must strive to insure that palliative patients have a right to care. Palliative patients have a right to die free of pain, with as few distressing symptoms as possible. The families of palliative patients must be treated as part of that patient care...with compassion and grief counseling available. A Hospice in Moose Jaw would provide that care. It must be a centre with the skills and medical support to provide for the complex patients as well. Hospice care is not just a nicely decorated quiet space ...it is so much more.

Adding Life to Days When Days Cannot Be Added to Life.