Hospice: Care and Comfort for the Patient and Caregiver

https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/video/hospice-awareness?src=soc_yt
-TRANSCRIPT-
JOHN WHYTE: Welcome, everyone. I’m Dr. John Whyte. I’m the Chief Medical Officer at WebMD. If you were diagnosed with a terminal illness, have you thought about and discussed with your family how much care you’d like to receive? What type of care you want? And where you would want that delivered, whether you want it at home or in a hospital? And have you thought about hospice? If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t.
And my guests today are working together to raise awareness of hospice care. Joining me is Tom Koutsoumpas. He is chairman of the board of Capital Caring Health. And Sharon Casey. She is chair of the board of the Washington Home Foundation. Thank you both for joining me.

TOM KOUTSOUMPAS: Good morning, John. Thank you for having us.

JOHN WHYTE: Well, I want to start off and maybe we could just give a quick reminder to our listeners as to what do we mean by hospice care, because we know there’s a lot of misconceptions about that. Sharon, what should listeners know?

SHARON CASEY: It’s important to know that hospice care can take place in one’s own home or, in a relatively small number of cases, there are inpatient facilities that provide around-the-clock hospice care in certain situations, where pain or symptoms are more difficult to control and the family caregivers can’t really cope with the situation at that point. But hospice can prolong the life, the last weeks or months of a person’s life, because they’re more relaxed in their own home, their pain and symptoms are managed well, and they have an interdisciplinary team of people, not only medical personnel, but chaplains, social workers, whatever they wish around them and coming in and out and making sure that they’re comfortable and feeling as good as can be the case under the circumstances.

JOHN WHYTE: Tom, we know people wait a long time.

TOM KOUTSOUMPAS: Yes.

JOHN WHYTE: Why?

TOM KOUTSOUMPAS: Well, I think a lot of it’s a bit of a misperception and a misunderstanding of what hospice really is. I think as Sharon just explained, first of all, most of it is in the home. And so often people think it’s a place to go. And in 97%, 98% of our care at Capital Caring Health, for instance, is provided in the home. And so I think that’s a big misperception. We come into the home with the team that really provides all of the support for patients and their caregivers.

So it’s a really comprehensive care delivery model. But it’s very misunderstood, because people think it’s a place to go.

JOHN WHYTE: Sharon, what’s the goal of this awareness campaign?

SHARON CASEY: Well, certainly, it’s in a way two-pronged. We’re focused on raising awareness to– this sounds strange– but too medical personnel, to doctors, who are a major referral service or source, I should say, of explaining to patients and their families that hospice may be the best option for them at some point. And doctors, many doctors are very reluctant to have that conversation, because it’s a very difficult conversation. And in some ways, it implies to people that the doctor, the medical community is giving up on saving the person and providing treatment.

So it’s a hurdle to cross. And a lot of the older doctors especially have not had the training in medical school and awareness about hospice as they’ve gone along. And they just have established their own way of dealing with it, which is often just not dealing with it at all.

So the families, the second prong, is, of course, really all adults in the DC area that we want to make them aware, not only patients or potential patients, but their family members and caregivers, who are influential in the decision. And we decided to do this during the holiday season of Thanksgiving through the end of the year, because many families are coming together in this time. And they’re confronting the reality of a loved one’s situation. And therefore, it may be a good time for families and siblings to be able to talk in person about the next steps for their loved one.

JOHN WHYTE: So Tom, how do you start that conversation? A lot of folks may be listening, and to Sharon’s point, it’s hard to bring it up. So do you have tips for viewers to say, this is how you might broach the topic?

TOM KOUTSOUMPAS: Well, certainly, people who have been recently diagnosed with a terminal illness, that’s a natural place to begin the conversation. But I think as people talk about their end-of-life wishes, it’s important to have conversations with your family to talk about the things that you would like, the things that you wouldn’t like.

https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/video/hospice-awareness?src=soc_yt