Taking care of someone else and that too when you are not even related to him in any way, itself is a challenging task. It basically involves the negation of your personal desires and day to day worries with an intention to take care of someone else. The task becomes even more challenging when you are a hospice nurse who takes care of people suffering from an incurable disease.
You may think that someone is preferring our beloved for the amount given as a hospice nurse salary. But believe me, this sort of work is worth more than what a hospice nurse earns.
Let us share with you the roles and responsibilities of a hospice nurse to make you realize how demanding and nerve straining this job is.
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End-of-life Care
Providing end-of-life care is the utmost responsibility of a hospice nurse. A hospice nurse is trained and educated to suffice all the end-of-life care requirements of the patient and his family. There, the major challenge is that the perception of end-of-life care varies from individual to individual. Thus, a hospice nurse first needs to understand the mental and cultural definition of this type of care that a person has. Then, the services are delivered accordingly.
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Support And Spiritual Communication
It is a general human instinct that when a person gets old he seeks spiritual support. A hospice nurse also caters to this need sincerely. It is included in his set of duties to coordinate with priests, ministers and other religious scholars to make sure that the patient receives the desired assistance. They also try to relieve the patients by providing emotional support through love, care, and communication. This may seem an easy thing to do but in actual, it is really hard to do such things for others.
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Crisis Care
Patients in a hospice are rather more sensitive and vulnerable than patients in some hospitals. Sometimes they feel the pain that goes out of control and is simply unbearable. The other times they may suffer from breathlessness, agitation or bleeding that makes it difficult for the nurse to pacify them. However, it is a nurse’s responsibility to take the situation under control by giving some medicine to the patient. That medicine is not provided to extend a patient’s life but to provide him temporary relief.
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Additional Duties
Apart from these, a hospice nurse also performs several other duties, they are listed below in detail.
- A hospice nurse main guides or train the family members to assist him in providing care to the patient.
- It also a part of the nurse’s duty to make sure that the required medical equipment is made available to the patient at home.
- Furthermore, the nurse is also trained to take care of the availability of the required medication at home all the time.
Final Words:
Precisely, to work as a hospice nurse is a full-time duty that only trained and educated nurses can perform. If you are willing to get into such a demanding profession, you must first join a hospice nurse course offered at the Global Health Education.