MT Hood Hospice

Direct, compassionate, hands-on care is provided to the patient by a registered nurse who specializes in Hospice care, gerontology, and pain and symptom management. The care is regularly reviewed by the medical director and a pharmacist and by the supervisory nursing staff to assure the maximum comfort of the patient.the nurse usually visits twice a week, assessing the patients' needs and helping provide sufficient information to the caregiver to assure safe, palliative care. More frequent visits occur as needed.since our goal is to allow the end of life to take its natural course, no active, curative therapies are undertaken. In most cases a cancer patient would no longer continue to undergo chemotherapy unless its objective was symptom control. Hospice care neither hastens nor postpones death. However, pain and other symptoms are rigorously treated to assure the patient is as comfortable as possible, that his or her personality is not dulled or altered by drugs, social isolation or the environment.the other members of the interdisciplinary team, the social worker, the chaplain, the home health aid all help with the continued assessment of the patient to assure he or she has the best care available.