Kathy Scott is a hospice social worker with Hospice of Springville. She is a thirty-three year old Caucasian woman from a middle-class family. Kathy has a master’s degree in both theology and social work. Kathy Scott is an experienced social worker with eight years of hospice work and two years of pediatric team. Kathy is a respected colleague that is thoughtful and reflective. Evelyn Brampton is a twice married single parent currently facing her second divorce. The first divorce is connected to Timmy’s birth and illness. She was first married to Timmy’s father, but they divorced after two years of marriage. The second divorce stems from Evelyn’s preoccupation with Timmy’s condition which added to other marital problems she was having in her second marriage. Evelyn has another younger …show more content…
Timmy was born with physical and visual deformities. He has lived in an institution his entire life. Timmy does not interact with others or respond to visual or stimuli. He has limited movement and has to be repositioned every two to three hours to prevent sores. It is unknown if Timmy can hear or see. The medical team at the Pinecrest Intermediate Care Facility has become a source of frustration for Evelyn Brampton. It appears that Evelyn and the facility share opposing points of view as it relates to the medical care of Timmy. They each have varying perceptions of his current medical status and progress. Evelyn has requested the assistance of the hospice team to have her request honored on Timmy’s behalf. Problem Identification Kathy is a social worker for the Hospice of Springville with the assigned tasks of providing care to patients and families in need of end of life care. Kathy has to decide what is in the best interest medically for patient Timmy. She along with the hospice team will have to determine if Timmy should be admitted into the pediatric hospice care program. Contextual Analysis Internal
In the first three paragraphs, the author illustrates the state of Connie's relationship with her family. A father who works numerous hours, a mother who degrades her daughter's appearance and intelligence, and an older sister who
... this type of knowledge the nurse understood that her patient has a lack of social support and probably depressed. She encouraged Miss. Z to have a positive attitude to her life and current illness. The patient’s knowledge allowed me to understand that the client is having a difficult period in her life. She definitely needs a social worker and a support group to get through this challenging period. In the future I would like to observe more closely how this patient will respond to social worker’s help.
As I was listening to Carol’s story, I realized that her story is one of many patients. Sure, she was lucky that her husband had advocated on her behalf when she was most vulnerable and she took over once she could but how many people could not? Juggling only two balls in the air becomes tricky once we name them “patient care” and “budget”. If we were to place Carol in an ideal hospital, would she have had the same expe...
Wiener, Lori, Elizabeth Ballard, Tara Brennan, Haven Battles, Pedro Martinez, and Maryland Pao. 2008. "How I wish to be remembered: the use of an advance care planning document in adolescent and young adult populations." Journal Of Palliative Medicine 11, no. 10: 1309-1313. MEDLINE with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed May 26, 2014).
Final Gifts, written by hospice care workers, Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelly, includes various stories detailing each of their life changing experiences that they encountered with their patients. Hospice care allows the patient to feel comfortable in their final days or months before they move on to their next life. This book contains the information considered necessary to understand and deal with the awareness, needs, and interactions of those who are dying. Not only are there stories told throughout the book, there are also tips for one to help cope with knowing someone is dying and how to make their death a peaceful experience for everyone involved. It is important that everyone involved is at as much peace as the person dying in the
Cunningham, M. (2012). Integrating Spirituality in Clinical Social Work Practice: Walking the Labyrinth (1 ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc.
The thought of her brothers still being in her former home environment in Maine hurt her. She tried to think of a way to get at least one of her brothers, the sickly one, to come and be with her. She knew that her extended family was financially able to take in another child, and if she showed responsibility, there would be no problem (Wilson, 40). She found a vacant store, furnished it, and turned it into a school for children (Thinkquest, 5). At the age of seventeen, her grandmother sent her a correspondence, and requested her to come back to Boston with her brother (Thinkquest, 6).
Being in hospice care is a better alternative than being stuck in the hospital to try to avoid the unavoidable. Common misconceptions about Hospice could include that hospice makes life more miserable; however, a physician expressed his findings in Hospice,“You can only fail a patient if you fail to understand and respond to their needs. We may not be able to cure all of our patients, but if we can make them comfortable in the last moments of their lives, we will not have failed them”..Hospice care gradually emerged in the 1970s, when groups like the National Hospice Organization were formed “in response to the unmet needs of dying patients and their families for whom traditional medical care was no longer effective.”Herbert Hendin, an executive director of the American Suicide Foundations illustrates a story of a young man diagnosed with acute myelocytic leukemia and was expected to have only a few months before he died. He persistently asked the doctor to assist him, but he eventually accepted the medical treatment. His doctor told him he can use his time wisely to become close to his family. Two days before he died, Tim talked about what he would have missed without the opportunity for a
Hospice focuses on end of life care. When patients are facing terminal illness and have an expected life sentence of days to six months or less of life. Care can take place in different milieu including at home, hospice care center, hospital, and skilled nursing facility. Hospice provides patients and family the tool and resources of how to come to the acceptance of death. The goal of care is to help people who are dying have peace, comfort, and dignity. A team of health care providers and volunteers are responsible for providing care. A primary care doctor and a hospice doctor or medical director will patients care. The patient is allowed to decide who their primary doctor will be while receiving hospice care. It may be a primary care physician or a hospice physician. Nurses provide care at home by vising patient at home or in a hospital setting facility. Nurses are responsible for coordination of the hospice care team. Home health aides provide support for daily and routine care ( dressing, bathing, eating and etc). Spiritual counselors, Chaplains, priests, lay ministers or other spiritual counselors can provide spiritual care and guidance for the entire family. Social workers provide counseling and support. They can also provide referrals to other support systems. Pharmacists provide medication oversight and suggestions regarding the most effective
For instance, in Ellen’s birth-home, her miseries start with two unloving parents: a frail mother with rheumatic fever who has no control over her own family, and a bullying father who abuses Ellen and her mother verbally, physically and sexually. To make matters worse, Ellen’s mother overdoses
Gabrielle Saveri. "An ethicist insists patients need help living, not dying." People May 1995. Vol. 43
The care of patients at the end of their live should be as humane and respectful to help them cope with the accompanying prognosis of the end of their lives. The reality of this situation is that all too often, the care a patient receives at the end of their life is quite different and generally not performed well. The healthcare system of the United States does not perform well within the scope of providing the patient with by all means a distress and pain free palliative or hospice care plan. To often patients do not have a specific plan implemented on how they wish to have their end of life care carried out for them. End of life decisions are frequently left to the decision of family member's or physicians who may not know what the patient needs are beforehand or is not acting in the patient's best wishes. This places the unenviable task of choosing care for the patient instead of the patient having a carefully written out plan on how to carry out their final days. A strategy that can improve the rate of care that patients receive and improve the healthcare system in general would be to have the patient create a end of life care plan with their primary care physician one to two years prior to when the physician feels that the patient is near the end of their life. This would put the decision making power on the patient and it would improve the quality of care the patient receives when they are at the end of their life. By developing a specific care plan, the patient would be in control of their wishes on how they would like their care to be handled when the time of death nears. We can identify strengths and weakness with this strategy and implement changes to the strategy to improve the overall system of care with...
I decided to interview my older brother’s friend, Cory Ringlein. I have known him most of my life and he has suffered from lymphedema as long as I have known him, this is important because his mom was a social worker before she stopped working to focus on Cory’s illness. I know this was pretty influential on Cory; he watched his mom work as a social worker and helped him make the decision to be a social worker.
The end-of-life nurse’s primary objective is to provide comfort and compassion to patients and their families during an extremely difficult time. They must satisfy all “physical, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual needs” of the patient and their family. (Wu & Volker, 2012) The nurse involves their patient in care planning, as well as educating them about the options available. They must follow the wishes of the patient and their family, as provided in the patient’s advance directive if there is one available. It is i...
The social workers in both videos gathered information regarding each of the client’s issues. Another common denominator in both videos is that both of the social workers repeated what the client had said in their own words to allow the client to feel heard and understood. In the first video, social worker Karen asked direct questions relating to Mike’s alcohol addiction while also addressing how the addiction impacts his relationships including his marriage. Karen also addressed inconsistencies with the client doing so appropriately and quickly. It appears that in the first video, Karen focuses on the reality of the issue at hand to assist the client with establishing and accepting