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Show PAGE A8 All about Hospice Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kenneth Seifert, M.D. I am the medical director of the Applegate Hospice in Summit County. Applegate is a company that provides home nursing services and hospice services in eight locations in Utah and Idaho. In Summit County, our offices are in Park City and we provide services throughout the county. Our staff consists of Registered Nurses, Nurses Aids, a Social Worker, a Chaplin, Physical Therapists, Occupation Therapists and myself. All of us reside in Summit County or Wasatch County, so that Applegate Homecare and Hospice is able to provide rapid response to the needs of our patients here is Summit County regardless of the weather conditions between here and Salt Lake City. I have volunteered to write a short article every two weeks about a medical issue that I hope the readers of this newspaper will find interesting and informative. The first issue I would like to write about is one that is most close to my heart: Hospice. There are some commonly held misconceptions about Hospice. Many people think that Hospice is a place that patients go to. While we sometimes do admit people to nursing homes, and occasionally to hospitals, we are firmly dedicated to trying to provide hospice services to people in there own homes. Another misconception is that hospice is for patients with cancer. While it is true that many of the patients I care for have a diagnosis of some type of cancer, there are a huge number of other medical conditions that lead ultimately to death: Heart failure, lung failure, degenerative brain diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer’s dementia to mention a few, and Applegate Hospice admits and cares for people who have those conditions as well. Finally, I want to emphasize very strongly that hospice in no way advocates or participates in the hastening of death of our patients. Hospice is NOT at all involved in assisted suicide. Medically assisted death is illegal in all states except Oregon, where that practice is allowed under strictly limited situations. The infamous Dr. J. Kevorkian was not practicing hospice. He justly deserved to be convicted and punished. Hospice is a service that tries to provide medical, physical and spiritual support and relief of symptoms to people who have medical conditions when cure or treatment are not longer possible, no longer in the patient’s best interest and where death is expected to occur in the next six months. Hospice began in England in the 1950s in response to a perceived lack of interest on the part of the medical care system when a person could no longer be cured or improved. The traditional medical care system was, and continues to be, very dedicated to helping people get better, but formerly that dedication did not extend to situations where cure was not Subscribe To The Summit County News! Don’t Miss a Single Issue! 654-1471 MAY 22, 2009 Summit County News possible. Every one of us will die, and so at some point every one will reach a point where the curative medical care system can no longer help, and that is where hospice should become involved. My own career was in surgery, specifically vascular surgery. Most of the patients I cared for had atherosclerosis, which is a progressive systemic disease. Much could be done to prevent it, and much could be done to treat it, and many of the treatments involved highly technical operations, sometimes long stays in intensive care units, and difficult recoveries. But many of my patients eventually died as a result of this disease, and I often saw patients in hopeless situations being treated aggressively in impersonal, painful and even frightening surroundings of an intensive care unit, because the family or a physician, or both, could not bring themselves to face the inevitability of death. When my own death is inevitable, I hope to in comfortably friendly surroundings, be comfortably relieved of pain, and have some measure of peace and dignity not possi- ble in an intensive care unit or in a hospital. This is what Hospice seeks to provide. As medical director, I prescribe medications to relieve symptoms that a patient may be experiencing. Most commonly this is pain, and we have a large variety of medications to relieve pain that can be given orally or by way of a patch applied to the skin for those who cannot swallow. We also can use IV pumps, although this is rarely required. In addition, other symptoms I try to control are nausea, shortness of breath, dizziness, confusion, anxiety, bowel and bladder control issues, and treatment of wounds and draining fluids. In all cases, medications and treatment are aimed at improving a patient’s comfort, peace and dignity, rather than in prolonging their life. My role as medical director is not the most important role in Applegate’s Hospice service. The nurses, and especially the nurse’s aids provide much more of the important day to day care. The social worker and the chaplain are crucial to the emotional and spiritual support of the patient and also of the care givers in the family. Another facet of hospice care is termed “respite.” Family members can often become overwhelmed by the physical and emotional efforts required, and Applegate hospice can provide a person, often a volunteer, to allow a break for the family member, or just to allow activities like grocery shopping or care of the family member’s medical problems. When necessary, we will admit the patient to a skilled nursing facility to allow respite for the family member, although, as I mentioned, we try to keep the patient in the familiar, kind surroundings of home. Finally, Applegate provides a service that is unique: Music Thanatology. We employ a musician who is specially trained to provide emotional, spiritual and even physical relief though the use of music. She plays a harp. I have listened to her and it is wonderful! Every one of the patients and their families who have had this experience have found it to be wonderful as well. In the coming weeks and months, I hope to provide readers of the “Summit County News” with information that you will find helpful in everyday life, or in dealing with the often complex and frightening experience of illness. Service-wise, thereʼs nobody cooler. Donʼt take a chance on your air conditioner fizzling out when itʼs sizzling out! Schedule your cooling system clean and check now to ensure that itʼs in top working order for the hot summer ahead. We repair all makes and models 24-hour emergency service $300 Questar rebates available $1,500 tax stimulus available Licensed and fully insured Radiant heating specialists 435-657-2000 |