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DID YOU KNOW?
RECEIVING HOSPICE CARE DOESN’T MEAN ‘GIVING UP!’
What prevents families from availing hospice in Kolkata and other places for their terminally ill family members is the fundamental misconception that hospice means ‘giving up’ everything to hasten death.
However, studies show that patients in hospice facilities (compared to those suffering from the same level of illness in standard care) live longer with better pain and symptom management. Hospice helps them improve their quality of life with end-to-life care.
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WHO NEEDS HOSPICE CARE SERVICES?
Hospice Care for Adults
Adults suffering from a terminal illness and have a lifetime prognosis of 6 months or less need hospice services. The list of diseases includes –
- 1. End-of-life care for cancer patients – the most common illness for this hospice care
- 2. Heart disease
- 3. Liver and renal failure
- 4. Chronic kidney disease
- 5. Dementia and Parkinson’s disease
- 6. Cirrhosis
- 7. Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS)
Pediatric Hospice Care
Hospice care is also available for children and adolescents suffering from terminal illnesses such as cancer, genetic disorders, or neurological disorders. However, rules and regulations for pediatric hospice facilities and services are different from those provided to adult patients.
OUR HOSPICE CARE SERVICE
At Sonama Aya Centre, we provide a wide range of services for hospice care in Kolkata –
Hospice care for the elderly
When an elderly member is diagnosed with a terminal illness, everything changes for that person and their family. In this situation, our hospice care for elderly ensures comprehensive care and support to both the patient and their family. Our hospice team intends to maximize the person’s quality of life in this challenging time.
End-of-life care at home
You don't need to move away from home to receive end-of-life hospice care. Our expert team can provide end-of-life hospice services at home.
Along with the medical team and nurses, our hospice team provides emotional and spiritual support for pain and symptom management.
Hospice care for Alzheimer’s patients
Our services include hospice in Kolkata to the unique needs of patients who have Alzheimer’s. Our hospice care for Alzheimer's patients focuses on controlling symptoms, relieving pain, improving the quality of life and minimizing worry and anxiety for patients and their families.
End-of-life care for cancer patients
If you or your family member has advanced cancer and reached a point when treatment or therapy won’t help much, you may go for our end-of-life care for cancer patients. It would allow for pain management, improving the quality of life and supporting the patient and your family during those stressful days.
Our team provides 24/7 hospice care at home for cancer patients who are in the terminal stage of cancer.
End-of-life care for dementia patients
If you or someone from your family has been suffering from the last stage of dementia, you can reach out to our hospice care for dementia. Based on the patient’s condition and circumstances, we provide hospice services in Kolkata, whether in their home, nursing home, or assisted living community.
BENEFITS OF OUR HOSPICE CARE SERVICES
At Sonama Aya Centre, we provide comprehensive hospice care in Kolkata with an interdisciplinary team of trained nurses, physicians, caregivers and other required professionals. Our team ensures personalized care to provide comfort, dignity and improved quality of life for terminally ill persons and their families.
Pain and symptom management
Our hospice care focuses on managing a person’s pain during the last months of life. Hospice comfort care helps these persons live with ease and a sense of normalcy despite their terminal illness. We don’t intend to prolong a terminally sick person’s life as it is beyond our capability. However, our hospice care providers help these people live to the fullest and comfortably in the best possible way while managing their pain and symptoms.
Emotional and spiritual support
Each person with cancer, heart disease, dementia or other terminal illness can have different religious beliefs and spiritual needs. As private hospice care, our team first understands your needs and provides all necessary emotional and spiritual support to patients during their last life phase.
Here, spiritual and emotional support means helping you understand the meaning of death, a particular religious ritual or how to say goodbye to loved ones. Even if they want to speak to a spiritual leader, our team can arrange that.
End-of-life care hospice services
End-of-life hospice care at home or in hospital facilities focuses on caring for a terminally ill person and supporting their family. Our team comprises doctors and nurses who attend to your medical needs, caregivers, and counsellors to help your mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
Here, we provide end-of-life care for elderly, cancer patients and others suffering from a life-threatening physical condition.
Hospice physicians and nurse services
Our hospice team manages all care for a person with terminal illness. With a team of experienced physicians, trained nurses, caregivers and other necessary resources, we want to ensure that everyone involved in our hospice care in Kolkata coordinates with each other and organizes their services.
Whether you choose our hospice home care services or inpatient facility, you only need to contact our local hospice team if you face any problems. We always have someone, including physicians and nurses, on hand any time of the day or night to support you and your family.
Bereavement services
Losing a family member is always painful. Grief and emotional suffering are a natural response to loss. However, you are not alone in grief. As a local hospice care, our team works with people going through the bereavement phase.
With a trained volunteer or a counsellor, we try to support family members and other close ones through frequent visits, phone calls and support groups. One can opt for our bereavement service for about a year after the death of a person from cancer or any other terminal illness.
Volunteer support services
Our hospice volunteers help patients and their families face challenges while receiving medical care. By choosing our hospice care service in Kolkata, you can ask for help from our volunteers for various administrative and patient support activities.
These volunteers can make a difference by improving the lives of cancer, brain tumor, Alzheimer’s or dementia patients and their families.
Short-term inpatient care
Sometimes, patients may need support during their transition from the hospital’s curative care to 24-hour in-home hospice care. Moreover, patients may also ask for 24-hour inpatient care when the medical guidelines cannot control their symptoms.
In such situations, many patients receive inpatient hospice care in Kolkata for a short duration (usually 3-5 days) until symptoms and pain are under control.
Medication coordination
Our hospice centre is well-equipped to coordinate with concerned medical supply agencies and insurance companies to ensure that the patient’s medication, medical equipment and other medical supplies are readily available. Within the cost of hospice care (if included), our team also takes care of the medical supplies and medication coordination to ease the undue burden on the patient’s family.
Short-term respite care
Working as a caregiver for someone in a life-threatening condition is stressful and tiring in the long run. We understand many caregivers need rest to care for their health and mind. At Sonama Aya Centre, we offer short-term respite care for caregivers, allowing them to step away from caregiving for a while.
During respite care, the person with terminal illness can be kept in our hospice facility or their chosen nursing homes or hospitals. After the respite, they can return to the care under their caregivers.
Music therapy
In our music therapy, we assess the needs and strengths of a patient and design a treatment plan that includes singing, listening, and creating patient-specific music. The therapy is also a part of our hospice in Kolkata, where the patient may choose to take part individually, in a group or with family groups.
Our music therapy intends to enhance the healing efforts to address hospice patients' physical, cognitive, emotional and social needs. While not appropriate for every hospice patient, our music therapy surprisingly works for apparently unresponsive patients.
WHY CHOOSE US?
At Sonama Aya Centre, we expect to have terminally ill people come in earlier rather than later so that they can get the care to relieve their pain and suffering. Once you choose our hospice care in Kolkata for you or your loved one, we ensure to provide a better quality of living for the days that are left.
Let us tell you why our hospice services are one-of-a-kind –
Experienced team
We bring together an interdisciplinary team of experienced professionals with exceptional skills – including doctors, nurses, trained volunteers, counsellors and spiritual advisors. Everyone works collaboratively with the person who is terminally ill, the caregiver, and the family to provide the medical, mental, emotional and spiritual support needed.
Disease-specific hospice care
A person diagnosed with cancer experiences differently from those suffering from a heart disease or Alzheimer’s. At Sonama Aya Centre, we offer tailored plans for hospice in Kolkata, including clinical care and support services to fulfil the disease-specific symptoms and social and emotional needs.
- 1. Cancer: Hospice cannot save a cancer patient who is about to die within a few months. But, our hospice care at home for cancer patients and inpatient care can improve the quality of life for their final months, weeks and days.
- 2. Heart Disease: Our inpatient and in-house hospice care helps patients and their families deal with the massive impact of terminal heart disease when curative treatment is ended.
- 3. Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Those who are in the end stage of Alzheimer’s and dementia should opt for our hospice care for Alzheimer’s patients. We design personalized care plans to ease pain, control symptoms, elevate life quality, and reduce stress for patients and their families.
- 4. Kidney Failure/Liver Disease: Even if you decide to forgo dialysis in case of kidney failure for you or your loved one, your search for comfort and support doesn’t stop. The same goes for chronic liver failure, cirrhosis or lung disease. Discontinuing the medical treatment affects the entire family. That’s when Sonama Aya Centre’s best hospice care services can help.
- 5. Pediatric: With pediatric hospice care at Sonama Aya Centre, the parents can determine the care plan in collaboration with their doctors. Our pediatric care plan focuses on the patients and their families.
Optimal hygiene
Depending on the patient’s condition, our hospice team ensures that hygiene is maintained for people with life-limiting illnesses. From maintaining their daily hygiene to helping them with eating, drinking and medication, we try to fulfil all personal hygiene needs.
Inpatient hospice care at homely environment
In most cases, terminally ill people prefer to stay at home during the last phase of their lives in familiar surroundings with family. However, they may ask for inpatient care when symptoms cannot be managed at home. Our inpatient hospice care in Kolkata helps patients assess and manage acute and uncontrolled symptoms and pain that cannot be accommodated at home.
24-hour hospice care services
People with serious illnesses often opt for 24-hour in-home hospice care or intensive comfort care at home to spend their last days in the homely surroundings with their families. Our hospice team works in shifts to provide round-the-clock care and support to patients during difficult times.
Respect for wishes
Having a conversation with someone approaching the end of life is always hard. However, our hospice team always works collaboratively to help make healthcare decisions for patients and their families. We respect the patient’s wishes – even when they cannot verbally communicate them.
Personalized care plan
At Sonama Aya Centre, we never treat our patients as just another number. Instead, we create personalized care plans to treat them as human beings. Our nurses, caregivers and volunteers always try to add personal care so that you have the peace of mind that your loved one is in good hands.
COST OF HOSPICE CARE
The cost of hospice care varies on various factors, including the level of care required by the patient to the care plan you choose, your location and the care duration. Consider all these matters while selecting a hospice care service. For example, the 24-hour hospice care cost must be higher than respite care for 3-4 hours.
Some health insurance policies typically offer hospice services for some illnesses. Discuss this matter with the insurance provider to get a clear idea.
A NOTE FROM OUR HOSPICE TEAM
Death is an inevitable truth about life, just as much as birth is. We all have to experience death one day. So, when there is time, have a conversation with your loved one about the essential steps to take if you develop a severe illness and how you’d prefer to spend the last days of your life.
A fruitful discussion will help you and your loved one decide about your care plan. Please get in touch with us earlier rather than at the last moment for you or your loved ones.
At Sonama Aya Centre, you can contact us anytime with your queries. Our hospice care experts are available to answer questions, support, and meet your needs.
A Kidney Cancer Patient’s Story
Mr Binoy Roy (name changed) was 81 when he learned he had stage IV kidney cancer. Living with a strong sense of independence his whole life, he didn’t bother to go through prolonged cancer treatment at that age.
Then, he came to know about hospice care from his physician, who explained that hospice is not about giving up but living the rest of his life with comfort and dignity.
The transition was not easy, as his family members weren’t ready to leave him untreated. Finally, he convinced them once he found trusted hospice care in Kolkata, and a sense of peace settled over them.
Mr. Roy enrolled in hospice care at home. The hospice nurses and caregivers became an extended part of his family with their expertise, gentle care and quiet smile. They managed his pain and allowed him to savour the simple pleasures in his homely environment.
One crisp spring evening, as a nurse tucked Mr Roy into bed, that old man wished to meet his entire family. Within moments, everyone in the family saw Mr Roy with a feeble smile and weak voice, saying, “Pain and suffering are inevitable in life. But these are also temporary. Time will heal everything someday.”
The following day, Mr Roy was gone, peacefully nestled in his favourite bed. The world seemed gloomy for his family. But with time and the support of the hospice in Kolkata, they gradually understood the true meaning of his last words: the man who spent a well-lived life, often taking pride in his independence.
OM SHANTI!
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