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Im not sure about hospice being a good choice or not.
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I can think of no disadvantages of having had hospice care in place for my parents.
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Reply to lealonnie1
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If you mean residential hospice in a hospice facility, then it has many benefits for a person who is seriously ill and death is imminent. The will receive very good drugs that will help keep them calm and manage pain.

In my experience in homecare which is a long one over 25 years as a caregiver and a hospice caregiver, there really isn't much benefit. I find they are more of a hinderance to the people who are actually taking care of the person than they are a help. The 'pros' of having hospice at home is that Medicare pays for it. They will pay for the couple hours a day a hospice aide is assigned too. They will drop off a lot of drugs and hopefully the patient ortheir family knows how to administer them. Or their hospice aide is competent in drug administration and will help them out on the quiet because the RN's who come by once or twice a week for ten minutes are pretty useless. So are the social workers they will send to do the same.

Once again, this is the majority of my personal experience dealing with in-home hospice services.
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Reply to BurntCaregiver
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Brandee again.

Hospice also gave Mom an evacuation from her home plan in case of natural disasters.

I got a text from the RN prior to a hurricane coming near the area wanting to know Mom's preference of facilities in case Hospice had to evacuate Mom from her home. I'd already toured all of the facilities in the area so I ranked 4 nursing homes in order of preference.

This gave me huge piece of mind.

I'll also add that Mom was in hospice for 18 months. Everyone we worked with was positive and uplifting. We had one back up RN who was in her 80's. She was amazing.
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Reply to brandee
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Having an RN visit once a week gave me peace of mind.
The last 4 months the RN visited 3 times a week which gave me peace of mind.
Mom was on very few meds but the RN took over responsibility of Mom's routine meds which meant one less job for me:)
The social worker once talked with me for over an hour which was really helpful to me towards the end.
We had good laughter with the Chaplain.

We moved Mom to physical hospice from in home hospice during her last 2 weeks. Physical hospice allowed my sister to bring her dog to visit. Physical hospice also allowed all of Mom's caregivers to continue working with her at physical hospice.
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Reply to brandee
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They were a tremendous support and help when my dad chose that path. Provided endless supplies and medical equipment, aide twice a week for changing sheets and bathing, nurse support once a week to start, but then became anytime we called, comfort meds, and loads of good guidance. They also provided a list of non employees, people they’d worked with and knew to be good, mostly CNA’s who wanted side jobs. I hired a couple of them who proved invaluable. Downsides, if you’re expecting full time help, it’s not that, most all the hands on caregiving is still on the family or who they hire to provide, and it’s both physically and emotionally exhausting. It’s also hard to see someone you love die in front of you, it feels like a privilege to see them out of this world, but also so very difficult. Some cities have inpatient hospice houses, where the families can stay as much as they like and the hands on care is provided by medical staff. Those are ideal to me. Having walked through it, I don’t buy any of the hospice rushing death stuff, but if they do, so be it, it would be a kindness in such a rough time. I wish you peace in deciding what’s best in your situation.
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Reply to Daughterof1930
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We have been going through this very same thing the past couple of months. Dad is 95 years old with advanced Alzheimer’s and lives in a 45 resident assisted living facility. We were told in order to keep him there we would have to put him under hospice. we did this, but within three weeks the facility ended up telling us they could no longer assist him with anything so he would be in bed 24/7. We moved him to a smaller assisted-living with only six residents and it’s been wonderful.
But going on hospice definitely has its pros and cons. If you’re not on hospice, you can have home healthcare services come and also the doctors who see him were a little more proactive on treatments, such as skin cancer, congestion and such. Hospice is more about making sure your parent is comfortable, safe, and reasonably happy in their care as they are at their end of life, even though that could be a year away.
But we have definitely found big benefits with hospice. The nursing is on 24 hour call so if anything happened in the middle of the they will run over and care for him. we also found the level of caretakers who came to be much higher under hospice. Currently, he has a PhD who’s just working as a hospice nurse, an LPN and a CNA. Each visits him once a week and sometimes the CNA comes twice a week to give him a full bed bath. We did not have service for the past two years at the other ALF.
I have also found the triage line and other staff on the hospice team to be wonderful and very helpful.
I’m actually glad he’s on hospice and glad we made that decision
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Reply to Skelly1230
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Advantages only for me.
While they provide little and less and less they do provide social worker on call, clergy on call, refusal of having to be hauled in for treatment and care, the good meds, help for family with bathing several times a week, RN once a week and on call. Again THE GOOD MEDS.
Good equipment and needed items like BS commode free of cost.
I don't see any downside myself. Some claim it hastens death. For myself, I say GOOD, I sure do HOPE SO.
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Reply to AlvaDeer
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