Congestive heart failure, or CHF, is a progressive illness that greatly affects the quality of life for the people who suffer from it. When CHF reaches the later stages, hospice care services are a compassionate way for seniors to get the comfort and support that they need to deal with the final months of their lives. Hospice offers ways to deal with CHF that curative treatments don’t offer.
Care Planning and Needs Assessment
The first step in hospice care is for CHF patients to go through a needs assessment. This helps everyone involved to get on the same page about care needs to put together a comprehensive plan of care. Hospice teams are made up of healthcare professionals, social workers, spiritual care providers, and more depending on the needs of the patient.
Managing Symptoms
Patients with CHF deal with a variety of different symptoms, especially near the end of life. These symptoms could include fatigue, fluid retention, shortness of breath, and pain. With curative treatments, there may not be solutions available to manage some of these symptoms. Hospice care can focus on symptom management differently, meaning that there are more options available for handling these challenges.
Emotional Support
Life-limiting illnesses bring with them a lot of emotional baggage, too. Patients and families need to find ways to deal with those emotions healthily. Hospice care helps patients and families to access services and support systems that help them deal with the end-of-life experience.
End-of-life Planning
Planning for the end of a patient’s life is not easy to do. And for seniors who are dealing with an illness like CHF, there are lots of preferences and possibilities to consider. Advanced care planning helps to ensure that the patient’s wishes are followed all along the way. This helps to align care plans with end-of-life preferences.
Palliative Therapies
There are many other opportunities for palliative therapies when patients are in hospice. For example, relaxation therapies may help seniors deal with symptoms like shortness of breath. Some of these treatment options may not have been available while trying to treat CHF in other ways.
Support for Family Caregivers
Hospice care offers support that family caregivers need when they’re facing the end of a senior’s life. Providing care to CHF patients is complicated and can be overwhelming, so family caregivers must have respite support as well as education about how they can be there even more for the person nearing the end of life. Families also have access to bereavement support whenever they need it, both before and after their aging family member passes away.
Hospice care for CHF patients offers a variety of different tools to support the patient and the family as the illness progresses. Hospice in general is about offering compassionate and holistic support, which opens up a lot of different options that families might not have been able to access in other ways.
If you or your aging loved one could benefit from Hospice Care Services in North SC, contact the caring staff at Grove Park Hospice, at (803)536-6644.
Providing Hospice & Palliative Care in Orangeburg, Bamberg, & Calhoun Counties.
Our team provides care tailored to each patient and family’s individual needs and preferences. Our commitment to promoting comfort and dignity to persons living with a life‐limiting illness is demonstrated daily by our caring team of professionals and volunteers. Grove Park Hospice provides pain management and symptom control, allowing families to focus on what matters most. Our team of nurses certified nursing assistants, social workers, chaplains and volunteers spend quality time with patients, ensuring they are comfortable and at peace.
Choosing Grove Park Hospice means choosing to live life to its fullest. We focus on enhancing quality of life by offering an array of services to our patients and their families.
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