End-of-Life

End-of-Life

End-of-life (Palliative) care is about providing comfort, dignity and ease

during a person’s final days, weeks or months of life. Caregivers provide a broad range of supports to ease the end-of-life process for both clients and their loved ones.

End-of-Life Caregiving may include:

• Monitoring skin condition, apply lotion or cream and check for irritation on high risk areas
• Medication administration including butterfly port for palliative medications
• Mouth care, peri-care and other personal assistance
• Repositioning in bed or while seated
• Mobility support as tolerated
• Lifts & transfers as tolerated
• Bed care & bed bathing
• Providing emotional support
• Reassurance and gentle touch
• Monitoring for unexpected condition changes, pain or breathlessness and reporting for clinical follow-up

End-of-life services can evolve quickly

and take many shapes from daily hourly visits to daily live-in and then sometimes to 24 hour care.

A 2nd caregiver may be needed

for short periods to provide safe patient handling for turns, lifts and personal care. This is uncommon and usually due to frailty, obesity and/or delicate skin condition.

In many circumstances it is possible for someone to go through end-of-life in the comfort of their own home and have a 'good' death. Hospice or hospital are more suitable to provide End-of-Life care when there are:

• Serious seizures
• Quickly fluctuating medication management needs
• Breathlessness & Agitation that are not able to be managed with medication
• High chances for serious bleeding (Can be manageable at home but generally not recommended and requires advance preparation for traumatic event)