Home is where you’re most comfortable. This is the place where you’ve lived for years, raised your family and celebrated many important milestones. Here, you’re surrounded by family photos and mementos of a life well-lived
Once you enter palliative care, you begin to think about what end of life means to you. Understandably many patients prefer to be in the familiar, comfortable surroundings of their home rather than in hospital. Accessing in-home palliative care makes dying at home much more likely.
What is palliative care?
Palliative care aims to help you live as fully and as comfortably as possible when living with a life-limiting or terminal illness.
The focus is no longer on curing your condition but rather on managing symptoms and supporting your physical, emotional, spiritual or social needs. Palliative care is a family-centred service that may provide practical and emotional support to your loved ones too.
Palliative care may be delivered wherever it is needed – in hospitals, hospices, residential aged care facilities and in your own home.
What does in-home palliative care involve?
With in-home palliative care, you continue to live at home and receive palliative care there.
Your home-based palliative care team seeks to support your quality of life and keep you comfortable in your own home right to the end. They might support you with things like:
- Managing pain
- Personal care – hygiene and toileting, for example
- Handling the emotional, spiritual and psychological aspects of dying.
Your palliative carers also play a key role in supporting your family. Caring for a dying loved one is emotionally and physically exhausting – the palliative care team provides invaluable support to family members during this time. They bring a depth of skill, experience and empathy that is sorely needed as families navigate the final stages of this journey.
Our approach to in-home palliative care
Focused Health Care offers a high level of expertise in palliative care.
Our Palliative Care Team is led by our Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner, a highly trained and experienced nurse who can support the emotional, cultural and spiritual needs of you and your family during this time.
We deeply believe a dignified death is possible in all circumstances. We understand that this experience is different for everyone and needs to accommodate your values, beliefs, family circumstances and personal wishes. We’ll talk with you openly and honestly and take the time to understand your desires early to reduce your stress and help you cope.
We provide:
- An end-of-life care plan, created by a highly qualified Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner, that
- Reflects your wishes and needs
- Respects your dignity
- Promotes your comfort and well-being
- Supports your family
- Integrated end-of-life support, working closely with your wider treatment team
- Around-the-clock care – we can be with you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- Medication management – we ensure you’re receiving the right medications at the right time.
Registered nurses provide all your palliative care when you enrol with us. That means a higher level of care and service as our nurses can administer pain and other medications through a syringe.
Family support
Family members experience great anguish when someone they love is dying. It’s deeply distressing to watch someone suffer and to have to contemplate the unthinkable prospect of living without them.
It’s also exhausting. By this stage, round-the-clock care may be needed and it’s impossible for family members to do it all.
Home-based palliative care plays a vital role in supporting family members. We ensure there are well-trained, experienced and skilled nurses who understand your loved one’s needs and their changing condition. That’s such a relief. It also means you can take some steps to support your own needs, like going for a walk in the fresh air or meeting a friend for a chat. With our presence and encouragement, you’re able to do those things and gain some respite and refreshment.
Accessing our palliative care service
If you would like to access in-home palliative care for yourself or a loved one, please call us on 1300 201 351 or complete our enquiry form and we’ll be in touch.
Our registered nurses can quickly be on their way to you, delivering the care you need to remain in your own home. We have helped many families through this process and know what a difference it can make and how much it can mean.
All information is general in nature. Patients should consider their own personal circumstances and seek a second opinion.
