Home Visit and Palliative Care

Abstract

To date, an advance in medical technology and science increase the population’s life-span. Hence, palliative medicine, aiming to improve quality of life in patients’ life with incurable diseases becomes essentially significant. Palliative care is a holistic approach, incorporating physical, mental, social and spiritual health. Most Thai patients in the late stage of diseases prefer staying and receiving health care at home where they feel more familiar and restful. In addition, home is the place where they can be with their beloveds and relatives. Therefore, they would like to die at home rather than at hospital. However, many of them did not live, the way they want the remaining of their lives to be nor they die where they would like to die. This is because their caregivers could not manage the exacerbation of symptoms properly, along with the rapid progression of diseases, resulted in hospital admission at the end stage of patients’ lives. Hereafter, palliative home visit plays an important role to allow patients spend their precious time as they approach the end of their life and finally die peacefully at home as they wished. Palliative home visit must be well-planned and appropriate for each patient to ensure that patients, their families and caregivers receive the best health care, according to patients’ will.

Keywords

• comprehensive care
• end of life
• home visit
• palliative care