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When caring for terminally ill patients becomes significant
2006-05-01 08:35:24
By Correspondent David Stanley
A Terminally ill patient needs tender love and care. Drugs will have failed and in most cases hospitalisation will not be necessary.
The patient will need the tender love and care from relatives.
The relatives do not necessarily have to be nurses or doctors.
Any person staying with the sick relative at home can provide this type of care.
Towards the discharge days from Hospital the caregiver must be involved in the care of the patient together with the nurses.
This care includes feeding of the patient, bathing of the patient and if there are any medicines to be given to the patient, the relative must be shown how to do this.
If there are any exercises to be done by the patient, the relatives must be taught before the patient is discharged and must be familiar with the times each activity is to be carried out.
If the patient is confined to the bed the relative (s) must also be taught how to turn the patient.
The patient’s bed linen must be changed whenever necessary and he or she must always lie on a dry surface and not on wet surfaces.
Turning of the patient from side to side must be done two hourly to prevent development of pressure sores.
The patient also needs mouth care in order to promote appetite. All these activities need to be taught to the relative before the discharge of the patient.
The relative(s) must have love in order to succeed as the terminally ill patient might be very aggressive at times.
All what is needed from the relative(s) is tender love and care to the patient despite the cost.
The nurses may follow up the patient at home to check on whether the relatives are coping well with the terminally ill patient. They will also give advice on whatever the relative and patient might need.
The terminally ill patient care is under the Home based care Programme in which there are Voluntary Village or Community Based Workers who go around visiting these terminally ill patients supporting them and their relatives psychologically and physically.
They also check on their needs like food or material things like mattresses and painkillers.
They will also assess if there is need for the patient to go back to the hospital for re-admission like in the cases of severe diarrhea where there is need for fluid replacement intravenously.
After fluid replacement, the patient can be discharged on Home Based Care Programme again.
Many people like this programme because it is more comfortable to die among one’s relatives with each one giving as much tender love and care as one can possibly give to a loved one.
With the advent of the deadly HIV/Aids disease, home-based care has become more popular since hospitals cannot cope with the ever-increasing number of patients.
In its inception days, the programme of Home Based Care had a lot of problems since most relatives neglected the patient especially if the patient was suspected to be HIV positive.
They feared that any contact with the patient would lead to contracting the disease.
There was a lot of stigma associated with the disease and many patients found themselves abandoned by their own relatives.
However, with continued education on Home Based Care and the need to give a dying relative tender love and care in his or her last days, stigmatisation is slowly disappearing. People are beginning to understand and actively support a terminally ill relative.
It is important to note that we still have cases of terminally ill patients being abandoned by their close relatives. Some are just taken home and quarantined in their own room with food being dumped in that prison of a room.
No one ensures the patient has eaten or turns the patient and as a result the patient develops bed sores and dies a painful death.
Sometimes these patients die of starvation because no one is prepared to feed them and they will be too weak to feed themselves.
All this can be avoided if people adhere to what Home Based Care advocates for.
There is nothing as rewarding as giving a relative tender love and care in his or her last days so that he or she can depart in peace.
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