
Something to Think About
a blog on end of life
- All posts
- addiction
- advance directive
- alzheimers
- anticipation
- anticipatory grief
- Approaching Death
- assisted care
- assisted death
- Assisted Living
- bereaved
- Bereavement
- burnout
- cancer
- caregiver
- caregiver fatigue
- caregiver support
- caregiving at end of life
- children
- Clinician
- comfort care
- covid 19
- Death
- death and dying
- death cafe
- death call
- death care
- death doula
- death education
- death midwife
- death of a pet
- death ritual
- dementia
- dementia doula
- diagnosis
- Director of Education
- disease
- DNR
- doctors
- dying
- dying pet
- dying process
- Dynamics of Dying
- Eating or not eating
- elderly
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
- end of life
- end of life doula
- euthanasia
- family
- family caregiver
- father
- Fear
- Feeding
- Food
- Funeral
- gift
- Gone From My Sight
- graduating from hospice
- gratitude
- Grief
- Grief Counselor
- grief support
- Guilt
- holidays
- Home Care
- home death
- home health
- home healthcare
- Hospice
- Hospice Blue Book
- hospice care
- hospice chaplain
- hospice education
- hospice end of life care
- hospice for pets
- hospice nurse
- hospice nurses
- hospice patient
- hospice physician
- Hospice Social Worker
- Hospice Staff
- hospice volunteer
- hospital
- How Do I Know You ?
- How Do I Know You? Dementia at the End of Life
- Hydration or dehydration
- infant death
- labor
- life limiting
- life support
- loss
- media
- Medicade
- Medicare
- medication
- medications
- memory care
- midwife
- moment of death
- morphine
- mother
- My Friend I Care
- narcotics
- New Rules For End Of Life Care
- No Code
- Not Eating
- nurse
- Nursing facility
- Nursing home
- nutrition
- Old Age
- older pet
- orientation
- oxygen
- pain
- pain at end of life
- pain management
- pain relief
- palliative care
- palliative sedation
- pandemic
- personality
- Pet death
- Pet illness
- physician
- podcast
- POLST
- prepare for death
- quality of life
- religion
- Retirement Home
- sacred
- self care
- sleep
- Social Worker
- spanish grief literature
- stages of grief
- Suicide
- Supervisors
- support
- terminal
- terminal agitation
- terminal diagnosis
- terminal restlessness
- The Eleventh Hour
- The Final Act of Living
- This Is How People Die
- Time
- Time of Death
- trauma
- treatments
- volunteer
- volunteers
- washing the body
- widow
- wife
- You Need Care Too
Hospice provides care and services for people in the last six months of their life. A doctor must specify, in his/her best opinion, that this person has less than six...
Taking care of someone at the end of life is different from taking care of someone who is going to get better—-but most people don’t know that either. Unless we...
We human beings are complicated creatures. We approach death in the way we have approached living and according to our personality. Our belief systems are part of that living. Sometimes...
I think we healthcare workers rely on our words as our offering. Explanations, suggestions, instructions, even using words to offer condolences and trying to comfort. And yes, words are a...
Filling out an Advance Directive when you are healthy is different than filling one out when you are elderly or living with a serious illness...
Our base nature comes out when we are in pain, other worldly, and on high doses of all kinds of medications. We are unconsciously expressing the terrible situation we were...
Number one, we are all going to die at some point. Of course the operative words here are “at some point.” If we are told death will be the outcome...
If you have a good, amicable relationship then get them together and say, with caring in your heart, "I am going to tell you some things I have learned about...
She is gone, the house seems emptier. Baxter cat (who we let smell her before she left) seems at a bit of a loss, as he wanders the house. Is...
I want the medical profession, the medical model we find in doctors’ offices and hospitals, to do everything possible to help me not only regain my health, but to return...
Hospice is widely known for providing end of life care. It has grown in size and in its original scope of services. Even its definition of “end of life care”...
With old age and no active debilitating disease process, all the signs of approaching death (less eating, more sleeping and gradual decline in social interests) occur, BUT they occur over...
All the work we do leads up to the moment of death. Our goal is to guide and support those present through the moment the last breath occurs.
It is our job, our responsibility as end of life workers to be honest with our patients. In a “don’t tell mom” situation I first assess where everyone is, who...
Funerals are for the living. They are to bring comfort. Recognizing the life lived by the person that died is comfort to the living...
We in health care, enter a family's life at a challenging, sad and fearful time. It is our acts of thoughtfulness that will be remembered and provide comfort.
How tragic that none can come forward and say, "Your father is dying. Let's stop all these extras and keep him comfortable”. Family as well as many individual physicians do...
In our medical society today, it seems to be very difficult for physicians to tell patients and/or families that death is approaching; That this special person will die, and probably...
A hospice referral is a win-win. You win if they say it is too soon and youare not appropriate for hospice care, or you win by coming onto the hospiceprogram...
There is a huge void in our medical system that so many families living with dementia fall into. These families have a loved one too sick and require too much...
Part of normal grief is all the questions we will never have answers to, the whys and what if’s? With death by suicide those questions are ten fold. With a...