![]() The word “kill” as defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary is “to cause someone or something to die.” /us/dictionary/./. Hospices want their patients to live months. It is the space in between where extra monies balance out. The most money spent on a patient is in the first few days and the last few days. Hospice is reimbursed for every day that the patient is alive. It is another Blog post to explain end of life pain management BUT I can assure you Hospice personnel are experts in appropriate comfort care.Īnother aspect to consider is that from a practical, monetary stand point it makes no sense for a hospice agency to “kill” its patients. Most people don’t understand regular, acute pain management and narcotic use, let alone end of life pain management and narcotic use. We see misuse of drugs daily on the news. Our society today has a lot of fear round drug use, addiction, and overdosing. Misinformation about narcotics is huge in relation to “hospice kills". ALL will support the philosophy and recommend hospice care in a timely manner. If health care across the board recognizes that death is a part of living, that death will come and is not a failure but a normal natural progression, then ALL will teach that hospice helps people LIVE until they are dead. When I first read Hospice kills my thought was hospice is not doing their job of educating well enough-and yes, I do feel that is an element here but I also believe as I said earlier that it is not just for us who work in end of life to teach but all medical professionals. That there is a time to explain that death cannot be forestalled and here is what happens now. If all understood that death comes to everyone, that there is a time to treat and a time to stop. It would be ideal if all health care professionals understood the natural dying process. Yes, hospice kills reflects general ignorance but whose responsibility is it to teach the difference between real life and TV? I’d say it is us, the health care providers, the doctors, nurses and social workers, that are interacting with the patient during their disease process. We are ostriches with our heads in the sand and then one day we are faced with dying, our own or someone close to us, and we are unprepared. Other people die, I am not going to die and neither is anyone close to me is our thought. All these beliefs and thoughts are because most people are uneducated about the dying process. ![]() If only mom had been fed, had been given IV fluids she would still be alive. If only narcotics had not been used, mom would still be alive. We have come to expect and believe that if only more treatment had been given, mom would still be alive. Hospice care has then failed, has let the person die when death comes. It is because our medical profession is perceived as fixing people, no matter how sick the person is. It is because end of life care is different than caring for someone who is going to get better that we think the care being provided is causing harm. It is in part because people don’t understand there is a process to dying from disease and old age therefore how a person dies looks awful and scary. Upon refection I started asking myself why that is a perception? How did we get to the place where people think we kill our patients because they die. ![]() ![]() At first I was surprised but then I realized that yes, some people actually believe that hospice kills. “Hospice kills!” that appeared on my website under what do you want me to talk about. ![]()
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