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Importance Of Hospice, Palliative Care Discussed

About 20 people gathered recently to hear information about hospice and palliative care in the Communi-Tea room of the Findley Lake Community Center. Photos by David Prenatt

FINDLEY LAKE — There is far more to hospice and palliative care than most people realize, Community Connection at Findley Lake friends and guests learned at a recent presentation.

Shauna Anderson, president and CEO of Chautauqua Hospice and Palliative Care, spoke to those gathered in the Communi-Tea Room at the Findley Lake Community Center.

“I’m trying to dispel a lot of the gloom and doom about hospice and palliative care because it’s not all gloom and doom,” Anderson told the crowd.

Anderson first outlined the difference between hospice and palliative care. Palliative care, she said, involves any issue of a sick person’s life that is not curative treatment. It can be given alongside curative treatment and can go on for years, she said.

Hospice care is, by definition, palliative, because the patient has six months or less to live and is no longer receiving curative treatments, Anderson said. It is necessary that a physician has determined that the person is in the final six months of his or her life to be in hospice care, she said.

“Hospice care is not about that time that a person dies,” Anderson said, “but about the life leading up to that moment.”

Hospice care not only involves physical care for the patient, but can include such things as music therapy, massage therapy, Raiki, and pet programs where a volunteer helps take care of a pet, so the person does not need to worry, she said.

“There are many things we do that are unusual for people,” Anderson said.

One program that hospice care centers have been encouraged to have across the nation is a travel initiative, Anderson said. She told the story of one of their clients who had a grandbaby in Colorado that he wanted to see. “His family decided they could drive there with our help,” she said. “He was very sick and we were able to set up with various hospices to care for him as they traveled.”

This fall, Anderson said, her center anticipates opening a “Hospice House” in Lakewood. This house is designed for people who cannot go their own homes from the hospital but do not want to go to a nursing home, she said.

“They want to be home, whatever that might mean,” Anderson said. “So we made it a home environment.”

Anderson explained that the house has five units for patients and has furnishings you would find in a home. There are also kitchens where family members can prepare food. The “Hospice House” has a guest home in the front with two apartments for visiting family members, she added.

Anderson said they expect to house about 200 people a year in the home.

“We’re excited about this. We think it is long overdue.”

Anderson said their agency was founded in 1981 as the Hospice Information and Referral Center. Because it was staffed entirely by volunteers, they were very limited in what they could do for people, she said. In 1991, the agency received funding and became certified, Anderson said. This allowed them to provide services through Medicare and to hire a medical staff. At this time, they have about 550 people in this hospice program alone, she said.

After a few decades, “We decided there was something we were missing,” Anderson said. In 2011, they started training for palliative care. They gave it a six month trial and were very satisfied with the results, she said. However, they are limited in how many cases they can take on because palliative care is done entirely by volunteers and is not reimbursed, she said.

The agency uses many volunteers to provide a variety of services, Anderson said. Sometimes it’s as simple as going to the home and reading a person’s mail for them, she said. Companionship can be an important form of palliative care, she said. There are also vigil volunteers who stay with people in their final days, many of whom may not have family, Anderson said. Event volunteers and office volunteers do a lot of work behind the scenes, such as filing, selling raffle tickets, or providing food for events, she said.

“We do a lot of events because we are required to do a certain number of fundraisers each year,” she explained.

Bereavement volunteers are crucial because “the grief is so much more difficult and so expansive because of COVID,” Anderson said. Bereavement volunteers reach out to survivors of a sick person for many months afterwards.

“Sometimes, we just need someone to call a person and say, ‘How are you doing?'” she said.

The agency also employs social workers who help a sick person such things as dealing with estranged family members or unresolved issues.

“There are a lot of things that people don’t think of that need to be addressed before one is ready to let go,” she said.

The end result and goal of hospice and palliative care is to help improve a person’s quality of life, Anderson said. Often the services that the agency provides help a person reduce their need for drugs, she said.

“There are so many things that can be better about one’s life,” Anderson said. “There are a lot of things we can help with that people just don’t expect.”

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