Welcome back to another posting of In Due Course. Today, I want to continue our discussion about dying by addressing five "themes" for caring for someone who is dying and some practical suggestions on how to do carryout those themes. You can think of these themes, taken from a publication of the Colorado Collaboration on End-of-Life Care, as the five R’s for caring: Remember, Recognize, Respect, Reinforce, and Reminisce.
Read more…
In last week’s posting of In Due Course, I described the social dimension of care for a person coping with dying. This week I will cover the fourth and last dimension, the spiritual one. The spiritual dimension of care is based on the spiritual tasks the dying person faces that I described in Dying: Spiritual Tasks. As a reminder, these tasks include a search for meaning and for (re-)establishing and maintaining connectedness to oneself, others, and the person’s own perception of the transcendent. It is probably obvious that the spiritual aspect of a person’s life, whether dying or not, is not a stand-alone aspect. It permeates throughout the physical, psychological, and social aspects as well.
Read more…
Welcome back to another posting of In Due Course. Today, I will discuss the third dimension of care for the dying – the social one. This dimension is based on the social tasks I wrote about on July 10 and involves two areas: 1) the special relationships the dying person has with other cherished individuals and 2) the dying person’s roles and responsibilities in various communities, such as the family, the workplace, the organizations, etc. he or she is a part of.
Read more…
Welcome to another installment of In Due Course. Last time I started a four-part series on the dimensions of care for a dying person. The first posting was about the physical dimension. Today, I want to discuss the second dimension – the psychological dimension.
For many caregivers, the psychological dimensions of care can be more difficult to deal with than the physical dimensions. In the physical dimensions, there is something that the caregiver can try to do to relieve physical suffering: medications, physical contact, etc. However, when the suffering is psychological, i.e., involving feelings such as sadness, anger, fear, anxiety, and other so-called negative feelings, what can a caregiver do to help?
Read more…
Welcome back to In Due Course. Over the past five posts, I have described the various aspects of a person facing his/her own death. Now, I want to start a discussion of caring for a terminally ill person. We will go over the dimensions of care, hospice care, and conclude with a discussion about hope.
The four tasks a dying person faces also define the four dimensions of care for the dying person: physical, psychological, social, and spiritual. Today, we will describe the physical dimension. Probably the most demanding physical need of a dying person is the control of pain. Physical pain is actually divided into two major categories: acute and chronic.
Read more…
Recent Comments