If your insurance clients include hospice nurses or doctors, you probably spend a lot of your insurance meetings talking about the stress of their daily work. Being a hospice practitioner is an important job, but it requires a lot of compassion, energy, and empathy. To ease your clients’ stress and improve their patients’ quality of life, encourage them to engage in these best practices for hospice risk management.
Focus on Community
When your clients’ patients feel isolated, they are likely to regress more quickly or develop depression and other mental illnesses. Their priority in hospice care should be strengthening and fostering communities. Allowing patients’ families to visit regularly is a must, although your clients should still keep in mind how much rest their patients need. Encouraging doulas and other volunteers to spend time with hospice patients is another good way to nurture their communities.
Focus on Individuality
Each of your clients’ patients is unique, even if he or she has memory issues or personality disorders. When your clients interact with their hospice patients, they should refer to previous interactions, ask about their family members, and talk about their pastimes. As hospice patients’ time on Earth decreases, upholding their dignity as individuals becomes even more important.
Focus on Spirituality
Another important hospice risk management practice is spirituality. Nurses and other hospice caregivers should provide spiritual support to terminally ill patients to help them reflect on their lives, move on from past hurts, and prepare for death. If a caregiver and patient share the same faith tradition, this spiritual support can reflect their religion, but it does not have to. Even agnostics and atheists can benefit from spiritual support during hospice.
Focus on Gratitude
When hospice patients spend time thinking about what they’re grateful for, their brains naturally release serotonin and dopamine. These chemicals help them to rest easier and relax without the need for extra sleep medicine or painkillers. Your clients should spend time discussing what their patients are grateful for and helping them communicate these emotions to their families.
Focus on Music
A 2018 study of people receiving palliative and hospice care found that listening to music improved their physical and emotional conditions. Encourage your clients to help their patients listen to tunes that they love, whether it’s rock, spiritual, classical, or R&B music. Listening to music helps hospice patients relive old memories and distract themselves from their pain without relying too heavily on opioids.
Focus on Comfort
Hospice patients usually have life expectancies of under six months, so a big part of hospice risk management is making them comfortable. Ask your clients if they have considered aromatherapy and other comfort-inducing practices, and make sure that their food offerings are top-notch.
About Connected Risk Solutions
At Connected Risk Solutions, we use our expertise and experience to provide insurance information and programs to those who serve long-term care and senior living facilities. Since 2007, we’ve been offering insurance and risk management plans designed to help our agents give their clients the ability to achieve continued growth while simultaneously protecting against loss, containing costs and increasing profitability. With three offices to serve you in Chicago, Illinois; Phoenix, Arizona; and Burlington, Connecticut, we do everything we can to make your experience with us as professional and transparent as possible. To learn more, contact us at (877) 890-9301.
