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PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - Hospice Plett provides palliative care to persons living with life-limiting or life-threatening illnesses. This care is offered at patients’ homes, or as a consultative palliative-care service to hospitals and doctors.
Hospice is a non-profit organisation and care is provided by a multidisciplinary team of palliative care specialists.
Hospice is a non-profit organisation and care is provided by a multidisciplinary team of palliative care specialists.
Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.
Therefore palliative care is holistic care as it is a comprehensive approach of caring for the whole person including their families.
The word “palliative” comes from the Latin word pallium which means “cloak”, and our patients at Hospice Plett are surrounded, protected, and guarded by a cloak of care, comfort and support.
At Hospice Plett we aim to thoroughly assess the physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs of the patient and family. We address the individual needs of the patient in a caring and compassionate way and provide relief from pain and other distressing symptoms. We offer a support system to help patients live as positively and actively as possible, therefore maximising quality of life.
We make use of a team approach to provide the best care possible. Yet we also need to be careful not to hasten nor postpone death and therefore we offer a support system to the family both before, during and after the patient’s death.
We begin care at diagnosis of a life-threatening or life-limiting condition and continue through to bereavement.
Our clinical social worker Annesta Hofer and professional nurse Edward Muchenje, together with their team of trained and experienced home-based carers, assist our patients and their families with goals of care. These goals include controlling the disease, pain and other difficult symptoms; achieving milestones like birthdays; being cared for at home; maintenance or rehabilitation; professional psychosocial therapy; and support for families and loved ones.
These two specialists work with palliative-care plans which are developed after diagnoses and are seen as a holistic assessment. Advanced-care plans that depend on the stages of illness and terminal-care plans that provide care in the last 48 hours of life –referred to as the terminal phase of the patients life – receive detailed attention.
When working with bereavement, the psychosocial team is experienced and prepared to work with sadness, anxiety and fears from the family members about how they will cope. Each person’s end-of-life journey will be unique and it is important to provide care that is culturally and spiritually sensitive.
Both Edward and Annesta mention that what they do will never be considered as a job or work to be done: “This is our passion, our purpose and our destinies in life, each day we deliver a service to those who need us the most and we feel honoured to walk alongside the end-of-life journey, where so many lessons can be learned and compassion can be observed.”
For more information on our services, please contact our CEO Cecily van Heerden on 044 533 5616 or email info@plettaid.org. (NPO no 026-825)
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