The Definition Of Palliative Care Vs. Hospice Care.

People often confuse hospice vs. palliative care. In fact, hospice care includes palliative care within it. However, the two can be separated as different services.  An agency in the Kansas City area provided this definition.

Hospice care focuses on a person’s last six months of life of less. When curative treatment is no longer an option, hospice professionals work to make the patient’s life as comfortable as possible. This means that hospice care includes palliative care, because the goal is to make the patient as comfortable as possible for the time that’s left.

Unlike hospice, palliative care can be performed for non-terminal patients. It is in fact to help people live longer, happier lives.  Palliative care is included within hospice care to keep hospice patients comfortable. However, for non-terminal patients, palliative care is about managing the symptoms and side-effects of life-limiting and chronic illness. Therefore, you can receive palliative care at the same time you receive treatment meant to cure your illness.

Consider illnesses like heart disease, HIV/AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, the side-effects of chemotherapy. Palliative care, also performed in a patient’s preferred location, looks to make these conditions as manageable as possible so they don’t interfere with the patients’ lives.  Someone can receive palliative care at any stage of an illness, whereas hospice care is only appropriate at an end-of-life stage.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the U.S., according to The National Domestic Violence Hotline. That’s more than 12 million women and men a year—roughly the entire population of Pennsylvania.

Sexual assault and physical violence victims reach across a broad spectrum of individuals.  We tend to think of women but men may be victims too.  Older adults, persons with disabilities and children may be mistreated by care givers or family members. 

Another form of domestic violence is stalking, a pattern of repeated and unwanted attention, harassment, contact, or any other course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear. One in six women and one in 19 men have been stalked during their lifetime.

According to the Stalking Resource Center, National Center for Victims of Crime, stalking can include:

•        Repeated, unwanted, intrusive, and frightening communications from the perpetrator by phone, mail, and/or email.

•             Repeatedly leaving or sending victim unwanted items, presents, or flowers.

•             Following or laying in wait for the victim at places such as home, school, work, or recreation place.

•             Making direct or indirect threats to harm the victim, the victim's children, relatives, friends, or pets.

•             Damaging or threatening to damage the victim's property.

•             Harassing victim through the internet.

•             Posting information or spreading rumors about the victim on the internet, in a public place, or by word of mouth.

•             Obtaining personal information about the victim by accessing public records, using internet search services, hiring private investigators, going through the victim's garbage, following the victim, contacting victim's friends, family work, or neighbors.