Topics About 'Hospice Nursing'.

Palliative wound care is much more than exudate and odor management. Maintaining optimal function and mobility is an important part of symptom control and supportive care as well. Optimize Function and MobilityTo optimize function and mobility in per...

"I am having a good day today!" My patient's greeting was a warm welcome as we started our visit. She was on the front porch, in her wheelchair, oxygen tubing snaking discretely behind her, the compressor's noise muffled and distant. The sunshine was...

"While I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight...He instructed me and said to me, 'Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. As soon as you began to pray, an answer was...

The skin is the largest organ of the body and can become dysfunctional at life's end, with loss of integrity, just like any other vital body system, with reduced ability to utilize nutrients and other factors necessary to sustain normal skin function...

That I wasn't sure I would be able to, that I really didn't want to ever be in that situation. I got the job and was told that if we got any kids I probably wouldn't have to take care of them. We don't get many children on our services. It wasn't lon...

She was a young, successful and beautiful lady, a stunning mother of 3 young children with a proud husband. They were a happy and healthy family. She liked to take walks by the sea shore hand in hand with her husband as the children made sand castles...

In a 10 minute period, she would go from hot to cold and back to hot again, requiring multiple trips to her room to adjust the a/c or add/subtract blankets, etc. To add to the fact that her call bell was so consistent that it was the cadence to which...

The elderly patient stared back at me with watery, vacant eyes while I leaned over to listen to her lungs and complete my assessment. Her lungs were clear and her heart rate remained steady and slow. She reached up to pull at her nasal cannula and he...

We had just finished our Monday morning hospice report. As a group, we routinely meet for 30 minutes on Monday morning to share admissions and deaths over the weekend. I was preparing my schedule for the day, still thinking of a patient that had just...

Palliative care services are a very important resource for those patients who have been recently diagnosed with a terminal illness. Care needs fluctuate throughout the course of any life-limiting disease. No longer are patients required to terminate ...

I recently spent 45 minutes talking about death, and hospice, with my husband's sister across the country. Her mother (my mother-in-law)-a delightfully quirky 91-year-old activist who still spends her days faxing her congressmen-just signed on with t...

In nursing school, I was drawn to the "down and dirty core of nursing" that hospice care provides the patient, family and the nurse. I came straight out of nursing school and was privileged to work for years with the Karen Ann Quinlan Hospice care ce...

I had been the manager of our hospice inpatient unit for a couple of years. I had a fantastic nursing staff! I absolutely loved everything about that job with the exception of one thing; okay, maybe two, but the primary exception would have to be adm...

I slung my computer bag over my shoulder and pondered the question one of my nurse colleagues who worked at the hospital asked me. She wondered what my typical day was like. I wanted to laugh because "typical day" and "nursing" probably don't fit in ...

Funny how you'll plan every aspect of every trip except the most important one you'll ever take (NHPCO, n.d.). The process of dying is a deeply personal, inevitable, and unique journey that every individual will make at some point in the circle of li...

I had never intended on becoming a nurse, however, that is the direction that God sent me in and I have not regretted it ever since. I loved the nursing home and getting to know all of the patients and their families. I never had grandparents and the...

November is National Palliative Care and Hospice Month I scrolled down through the EMR and found what I was looking for: Palliative Care Consult. As a hospice nurse, we often get referrals from Palliative Care and their consult is a great place to st...

It's 0653. I pull up to the hospice unit, clock in, fill my coffee mug, and get my nursing brain printed out. At 0700, I count narcotics and take report on six patients. It's going to be a busy day, one of those days where I must control the chaos, t...

Sarah Jones, age 76, is a widow who lives alone. Due to a terminal condition, she is now on hospice. She has advanced breast cancer with a fungating malignant tumor. The tumor has broken through her skin and manifests as a malodorous, exuding, necrot...

Care for terminal patients is becoming a booming business as the Boomers come of age. Being one myself, I can tell you that Nursing care for these patients will only become more critical as shortages continue in the nursing field, even as new nursing...

I knocked the snow off my boots before knocking on the front door of the patient's home. His daughter, Clara, opened it and with a tired smile invited me in. Her father, Harold, was in a hospital bed was right in the middle of the living room, in fro...

I felt physically threatened as the patient's grandson pushed too close to me, face red, eyes angry, and yelled, "There was no way I am taking those missing drugs! And I have no idea where they are!" He continued to yell loudly at his grandfather whi...

There are 2 types of Earthly hells in my opinion: the physical kind (like being tortured or murdered) and the Emotional kind (like losing someone you love and watching them suffer) I have lived through my own personal Hell and it is not something tha...

I have a question, or a scenario rather that I have recently come across. Recently at work, I had a hospice patient who was unresponsive with respiration between 7-8 bpm with long periods of apnea. Resident was thought to be in the "active" dying pro...

I saw the owner of the small gift shop approaching me as I browsed through the cards. "May I help you find something?" she asked. I told her I was just looking around and asked her about the sign I had seen posted, "Going out of business due to healt...