November is National Hospice adn Palliative Care Month

Fairfield County, CT - November 1, 2017 - The month of November is National Hospice and Palliative Care Month. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the National Quality Forum, palliative care “means patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering,” for patients diagnosed with a serious illness. Serious illness may include advancing heart or lung disease, dementia, cancer, neurological disorder, and other illnesses. Palliative care throughout the continuum of illness involves addressing physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs and to facilitate patient autonomy, access to information, and choice. Ensuring the patients care is aligned with their goals and values, and focused on what matter the most to the patient and family.

• Care is provided by a coordinated interdisciplinary team.
• Patients, families, palliative and non-palliative health care providers collaborate and communicate about care needs across care settings.
• Services are available concurrently with or independent of curative life-prolonging care.
• Patient and family hopes for peace and dignity are supported throughout the course of illness, during the dying process and after death.

Accessed at: http://www.nationalconsensusproject.org/

Danbury Hospital’s palliative care service was implemented in 2004, and is proud to be the only Joint Commission Accredited Hospital Palliative Care Service in the state. Danbury Hospital has a unique model of providing palliative care to our patients. All of the hospitalist physicians are trained in palliative and end of life care and provide primary palliative care to all their patients. The specialist consult team consists of expert physicians, advance practice nurses, social workers, and chaplains. Using this model, they touch more than a 1,000 patients a year. Not only do they provide care in the Hospital, but they also care for patients in outpatient oncology, six nursing facilities, and patient homes.

Norwalk Hospital’s palliative care service began seeing patients in April of 2014. The consult team consists of an expert physicians, advanced practice nurses, chaplains and social workers. Norwalk Hospital continues to explore options of expanding into the community.

Education is a focus on both campuses. Both teams provide education about palliative care to the medical staff, nursing staff, and the community-at-large on an on-going basis.

Palliative care allows more emphasis on compassion, comfort, and the importance of patients understanding their choices for care and exercising their options based on what matters most to them.

To learn more about palliative care, go to www.getpalliativecare.org or call Danbury Hospital’s palliative care team at 203-739-6662 or Norwalk Hospital’s palliative care team at 203-852-3972.

Karen Mulvihill, DNP, APRN, Western Connecticut Health Network