Hospice Care Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Hospice Care - Essay Example The concept spread widely in the United States and it was something outside the conventional healthcare system. The hospices at that time were funded through charities and there was volunteer staff that provided personalized care to the patients. Hospice was not known for being a place for care but rather a concept of care. As it established, the hospice leaders came together to formulate standards and guidelines for developing hospice care (Cartwright, Miller, & Volpin, 2009). In 1978, the National Hospice Organization (NHO) was developed and it provided a national forum for education, discussion, and support of hospice quality care standards. Medicare coverage was expanded by the Congress in 1983 to include hospice care. Hospice benefits were also offered by many private insurers as they recognized the compassion for hospice care and its cost effectiveness. The number of hospices and numbers of patients in hospices have increased gradually and in 1991, there were about 1,830 hospices serving about 212,000 patients throughout U.S. Today the hospice concept remains unchanged since its early days. The intention of a hospice is to create a setting where patients get relief from their pain and are able to find support to improve the quality of their remaining life. Hospices make the effort to create a setting in which people can die peacefully. Today the hospices are a part of the mainstream healthcare system of U.S (Groninger, 2012). Choosing a hospice care may have advantages and disadvantages. The major advantage of a hospice care is the availability of a care team which consists of professionals and volunteers. This comprehensive and interdisciplinary team is involved in understanding and taking care of the patient’s needs. The team includes nurses, physicians, social workers, and trained volunteers who fulfill the needs of the patients. Another

WHAT IS MEANT BY STIGMA,AND DOES IT LINK WITH THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL Essay

WHAT IS MEANT BY STIGMA,AND DOES IT LINK WITH THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL EXCLUSIONS AND WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE - Essay Example In this regard, social labelling that discredits individuals’ virtual identities (Crocker et al 1998, p.505), inevitably leads to stigmatization that often times leads to distortion of individual identities. Social exclusion, on the other hand, refers to the state of being locked out from participation in the central social activities in one’s own society (Burchardt et al 2002, p.30); this means that if an individual fails to take part in social activities then they are ‘socially excluded’. The purpose of this paper is to explain what is meant by the term ‘stigma’, and to explore the possible linkage there is between this term and the concept of social exclusion; consequently, the conclusion of this paper will draw upon this knowledge to give implications for policy and practice. Simply put, stigma denotes ‘a mark of shame’ (Oxford Dictionaries, 2012), concomitant particularly with certain individuals in the society, thus, people who are stigmatized actually view themselves inferior due to social labels that describe them so, distorting their real identities. According to Chamberlin, stigma often leads to discrimination implying that the individual being stigmatized has a problem (Sayce 1998, pp.331-332); in this case, language is a powerful tool that functions in the creation of certain perceptions and stereotypes about individuals. When people make biased judgments concerning others, this negative labelling coupled with the resultant social labels and subsequent stigmatization that arises can be attributable to mental health issues. Language is very effective in helping people with mental illnesses to manage and eventually overcome their problem especially because the words used in reference to people influence their perceptions and expectatio ns respectively (Lynn 2010 p.1). For instance, existing knowledge shows that relapse rates of patients with mental