Many people believe that hospice care relies strictly on sedation as a major way to ease the pain of patients. This is patently false.
The biggest fear people have who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, is the process and pains of dying. The amount of pain a person feels for their specific illness varies for each patient.
Everyone deals with pain differently and people have different levels of pain tolerance. With pain comes pain management, and many people believe that hospice workers intentionally sedate patients as the go-to method for dealing with pain. But this is not the norm for how hospice caregivers treat their patients.
If a patient has chronic pain, it is common to start with a low dose. If these doses do not work, they are adjusted and altered to assure comfort for the patient. In the case of a patient suffering from severe pain, the doses will be increased.
Hospice aims is to ease the pain of patients. The process of dying does not need to be painful.
Aside from the physical pain, hospice care also helps families and patients deal with emotional and psychological pain. Hospice care provides spiritual counseling and bereavement assistance.
To learn more about Stein Hospice and the programs we offer please contact Bruce Birnberg, LCSW, Executive Director, at (732) 227-1212 or email [email protected].
Read all of the posts in our series about Hospice Myths »