It’s not easy to see someone you love ill and unable to take care of themselves. When you find a loved one’s health is declining, you may turn to palliative care at home. Keeping the individual in a place they recognize will be easier on them and their families. If you’re not sure what to expect from palliative care at home, keep on reading. 

Undivided Attention 

By choosing palliative care at home, you’re providing the individual with undivided attention and one-on-one time. In a nursing home, hospital or long-term care facility, the nurses and personal support workers are there to help and assist without needing to tend to other patients at the same time. 

More Privacy 

Receiving home care is not only easier for the patient, but being in the comfort of their own home gives a sense of privacy that they may not have gotten at a hospital or nursing home. When a loved one has health issues and can no longer care for themselves, the security of being in their own space with the help they need will keep them at peace. 

Flexible Schedules 

With at-home palliative care, nurses and personal support workers are available to you when you need them most. Whether that’s 24/7 or a few hours during the day or night, you can set up a plan for the individual to get the best care possible. 

Affordable Pricing 

Without the extra costs of nursing home accommodations and extra living expenses, palliative care at home can be cost-effective and really help save money. Compared to palliative care in hospital beds or long-term care beds, the cost of in-home care is quite affordable.

Reassurance 

The responsibility of having to care for a sick family member can be taxing and demanding. When you seek out C-Care for help, you’re being reassured that you made the right choice for not only the individual but for you and your family. 

Taking the steps to get palliative care at home will allow the individual to strive in the care of registered nurses. 

Assistance 

When hiring a nurse from C-Care, your loved one will be helped with basic activities and necessities such as transportation, bathing, dressing, and more. This assistance will take the daily task off of the individual’s hand, which will help take the stress off the patient. 

At home senior care has many benefits that can help your loved ones in a sensitive time. If you’re looking to help get them the assistance they need, contact us today!

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There can come a time in your life when you need to make a difficult decision, whether to send an ill loved one to palliative care or hospice care. Both can bring comfort and relief, but they have some important differences. Learn everything you need to know here to help you make the best decision for your loved one.

Palliative Care

Palliative care has one goal and that’s to give those with a serious illness a better quality of life. It provides treatment to those with cancer, dementia, chronic disease, and other illnesses to allow for a more comfortable experience. Palliative care provides medical care for their symptoms and can also address emotional, social, and spiritual issues brought on by the illness. Organized services often include physical and occupational therapy, medication, and nutritional guidance to ease pain, shortness of breath, sleeping issues, and nausea. Counselling is often provided, and family members can also receive the support that they need to help cope with a loved one’s illness.

Palliative care can be helpful at any stage of an illness and is best provided at the time of diagnosis. This type of care can be administered by a specialist or any health care provider. It’s also not limited to hospitals and long-term care facilities – it can be arranged at the home with a care provider or in a clinic that can treat the illness.

Hospice Care

When it’s not possible to treat an illness, hospice care is often recommended. This type of care is only provided when the treatment for the disease has stopped and the person has a life expectancy of 6 months or less. Like palliative care, hospice care provides comfort to the patient and support to the families. However, it does not attempt to cure the illness, but to simply make the person feel more comfortable. Since it does not use any treatment methods and only symptom relief is provided, hospice care can be arranged in any type of setting. It can be offered at home or in a hospice facility, hospital or nursing home. Hospice care does provide a lot of support, both emotionally and physically for the patient, but the day-to-day care is often left up to the family and friends.

Whether you have a loved one who needs around-the-clock treatment or symptom care, our team at C-Care Health Services can give them the support and attention they need. Our private nursing team can be hired to visit the hospital, hospice, nursing facility or home to provide all the palliative care and services necessary to ensure your loved one is as comfortable and cared for as possible. Learn more today about our services and what we can provide for your family members or friend.

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There may come a time in your life when you need to consider palliative care for yourself or a loved one. But what does palliative care mean exactly? This is a form of medical care that’s dedicated to those who are facing serious and terminal illness. The main purpose of this care is to help relieve the symptoms, discomfort and pain associated with their condition and make the patients as comfortable as possible during this difficult stage. If you or a loved one is preparing for palliative care, find out what it means for you and your family and what you can do to get the best care possible.

When Is Palliative Care Used?

Patients enter palliative care when they are suffering from serious illness or are terminally ill and no longer require treatment.  The objective is to help improve the patient’s life during their final stages, but it can also be applied at other stages of illness. For instance, conditions such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer can also benefit from palliative care. This dedicated level of care plays an essential part in the treatment of disease as well as end-of-life care.

How Does It Work?

Palliative care can be offered in a hospice setting or at home. It’s provided by specially trained doctors, nurses and health care specialists. However, access to palliative care may be limited or not ‘around-the-clock.’ This is why many people choose to hire personal support workers to provide several duties as part of a comprehensive care program. Their role often includes:

• Monitoring symptoms
• Administering medications
• Accompanying patients to appointments
• Assisting with the coping process
• Communicating with doctors, nurses and other health practitioners to help coordinate patient’s overall needs
• Bathing, grooming, massaging, and feeding patients
• Ensuring the setting is clean, safe, and comfortable
• Assisting in food preparation, home maintenance, and care of pets and children
• Supporting patients emotionally, physically and spiritually

What Happens During Palliative Care?

Palliative care focuses on treating symptoms that cause distress. The care is coordinated through a multidisciplinary approach that involves communication between physicians, psychologists, nurses, and social workers to create an adequate care plan for the patient. Treatment methods are also used to help the patient’s family through this difficult process.

How Often Is Nursing Care Administered?

Personal support often starts with a few home visits per week to provide bedside medical care or to help with personal needs. However, you can arrange for as much service as you need. If you wish to receive a few visits per day or even around-the-clock care, this can be arranged.

If you’re looking for professional and courteous care staff for yourself or a loved one, contact us at C-Care. We are a leading provider of palliative care throughout the Toronto area and offer affordable care for families. Contact us today to learn more about our health care services or to request a quote.

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Increasingly, nurses are training in Palliative Care so that proper preparation for our loved one’s survival can be well assisted.

It’s Recommended by the AACN

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing released the revised Recommendations, Competencies and Curricular Guidelines for End-of-Life Nursing Care of 2015, which identifies nurses as critical partners of quality End of Life care for patients with serious illnesses and their families from the time of diagnosis, across the illness trajectory.

High-quality training equips nurses to aid in the mental and emotional stress for the patient and their family. This training is a combination of spiritual-psychosocial health and physical health to assist in the heartache and disparity that accompany terminal illnesses.

Why would nurses need this?

Could you imagine the added stress frequent mourning could cause for a patient who is still alive? Good End-of-Life care aid the family in cherishing moments and helping them recall feelings of joy, humor, and peace during the last stages of life. This can reduce the fear and loneliness that the patient may endure in their last moments.

Be Vigilant about Social Isolation

Living too far from family with a terminal diagnosis without home health services is dangerous. Statistically, a growing number of patients fear loneliness and limit their desire for social engagements due to their illness. This can result in further physical decline, depression, and feelings of helplessness in patients surviving in isolation.

Be mindful of behaviors such as increased lack of contact with your loved ones. Social isolation can be a cry for help for those who feel less than independent.

While some family members are fully aware of each other’s needs, a disturbing diagnosis of a terminal illness or chronic disease can silence an individual, and pull them away from the ones they love and need.

Pre-existing Conditions

Pre-existing conditions or age-associated illness and diseases may lead to the need for palliative services either inside the home or at a medical home if necessary. These could be diseases such as:

• Cancer
• Heart Disease
• Alzheimer’s
• Parkinson’s Disease
• Other Serious Illnesses

Increase public awareness, educating family members about the dangers of social isolation is essential to ensuring the last moments of a patient are dignified and full of love.

To learn more about palliative care, call C-Care Health Services today at 1-866-433-1085 or contact us here.

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1. Palliative Care Is Only for Those at the End of Their LivesIn fact, palliative care actually not only seeks to improve the quality of a person’s life at a variety of different stages of their life and/or illness, but also takes a holistic approach in doing so. This means that palliative care seeks to offer not only physical care such as pain management, but also psychological, social and spiritual care. Even those who are not necessarily at the end of their lives, such as those with illnesses that may shorten life, can benefit from this holistic approach.
2. Palliative Care Doesn’t Give Patients Hope for the FutureSimilar to the above myth is the idea that palliative care gives patients the sense that their lives are going to end soon. However, since palliative care is not only for those with terminal illnesses, it is actually in the patient’s best interest to discuss palliative care options as early as possible in order to improve their quality of life as much as possible. Whether it addresses the psychological ramifications of their illness or the physical ones, palliative care is beneficial for those in the early stages of their disease or illness.

   Ultimately, you want your loved ones to receive the kind of care that they want to receive in the event that they can no longer make these decisions for themselves. These discussions must be had early on.

3. Palliative Care Begins After Treatment Is of No Use AnymoreIn fact, palliative care and treatment often go hand in hand. Many treatments go on to be very beneficial to patients, increasing their quality of life regardless of their particular prognosis. Palliative care does not mean that treatment stops when patients begin to receive this care. As mentioned above, one aspect of palliative care is physical and social care, which illustrates that treatment is actually at the centre of it.

   A similar myth is also the idea that pain medication given in palliative care can cause addiction. While it can cause the body to develop a tolerance, it does not cause addiction.

4. Palliative Care Is Offered Only by Specialists in the HospitalAlthough there are those in the medical field that specializes in palliative care, the goal of this particular type of care is for it to be incorporated into how all health practitioners treat those who have advanced illnesses.

   Similarly, palliative care is offered not only in hospital settings but also in a myriad of other settings, including at home. It is necessary that health practitioners work to dispel this myth so that patients can receive the benefits offered by palliative care.

C-Care Health Services offers a variety of affordable, personalized and high-quality services. Contact us today for more.

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In fact, palliative care, a more recent addition to the medical world, provides comfort, relieves suffering through pain management and improves quality of life in a wide variety of people of all ages, including those with serious and chronic diseases. Palliative care also seeks to support caregivers as well. Ideally, palliative care should be added early on into one’s treatment plan for it to offer the most benefits. In fact, studies have shown that it is associated with an increased risk of survival. It would be beneficial if palliative care was part of the treatment plan for every illness and here is why.

• Its Multidisciplinary Approach to Care
  Overall care is offered through a very well-rounded team of medical professionals, from physicians to nurses to social workers. This means that patients who include palliative care as part of their treatment plan are receiving the best medical advise from all medical professionals.
• Manages Total Pain & Other Symptoms
  Pain often goes undertreated in many people with serious illnesses. However, palliative care professionals focus on relieving this pain and particularly total pain, which goes beyond physical suffering to also include social and psychological suffering.
  Palliative care also offers treatment for additional unpleasant symptoms outside of pain, including nausea and fatigue.
• Addresses The Emotional Toll of One’s Disease
  The reason why palliative care is so beneficial is because it treats both the physical and psychological outcome of one’s disease. Naturally, chronic, serious and terminal illnesses can greatly affect one’s well-being and have been linked with poor mental health, such as depression. However, palliative care seeks to manage the emotional effect of one’s illness. Palliative care professionals are also experts at identifying warning signs of emotional stress, meaning that patients can receive treatment earlier than they normally would.
• It Focuses on Improving Quality of Life
  Palliative care focuses on improving quality of life via symptom management and offering support to the patient. In some cases, palliative care has even been shown to increase chances of survival.

C-Care Palliative Care Services offer a variety of affordable, high quality and personalized services. You will feel at peace knowing your loved ones are given the best possible care. Contact us today.

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