Summary
This episode of CareLab features a conversation between hosts Emilia Bourland and Brandy Archie and returning guest Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN, a nurse and hospice care expert. They explore the differences between hospice and palliative care, how to access these services, and common misconceptions that lead to underutilization. Helen shares insights into advocacy, hospice qualifications, and the importance of early conversations about goals of care. The discussion also covers hospice settings, including hospice houses and home care, and emphasizes the value of education and support through her Hospice Navigation Services.
Key Questions Answered
-
What is the difference between hospice care and palliative care?
Palliative care focuses on comfort and quality of life while a person is still receiving treatment for a chronic or serious illness. Hospice care is for patients who are no longer pursuing curative treatments and have a terminal prognosis of six months or less. -
Can someone receive palliative care at the same time as other treatments like home health or therapy?
Yes. Palliative care can be provided alongside other treatments like home health, outpatient therapy, or specialist care. It adds another layer of support to help manage symptoms and improve quality of life. -
How can someone access palliative care, especially in rural or underserved areas?
Patients can ask their doctor for a palliative care consult. In areas with limited access, telehealth options may be available. Public awareness and patient advocacy are key to improving access. -
What are the criteria for entering hospice care?
A person qualifies for hospice if a doctor believes they have a life expectancy of six months or less and are no longer seeking curative treatment. Signs include multiple hospitalizations, frequent infections, falls, or significant decline in function. -
What’s the difference between home hospice and hospice houses?
Most hospice care happens at home. Hospice houses or inpatient units are used for those in symptom crisis or those without adequate support at home. These facilities offer short-term intensive care and symptom management.
Transcript
Emilia Bourland
Hey everyone, welcome to CareLab.
Brandy Archie
Welcome to Care Lab. I am so glad to be here with you all today. And y'all should know that we have friend of the show, very favorite, Helen is here again from the heart of hospice. And Helen Bauer, thank you so much for being here. I think you maybe need no introduction, but I'm gonna do it anyway, just in case, because Helen has been a nurse for over 30 years, specializing in hospice and end of life care since 2009.
So she's certified in hospice and palliative, registered nurse, and has experience in patient care, nursing management, quality and compliance, basically all the things. And her passion for advocacy at the end of life is super clear. And you can hear it on the Heart of Hospice podcast, which talks about, not podcast philosophy, hospice philosophy, and how to get the most from your hospice experience in advanced care planning. And so over the years, Helen has helped hundreds of families.
and hospice professionals navigate their journeys by providing support, education, and encouragement. And she's helped us on many a podcast episode dive into that. And so we're so glad to be able to go deeper today. How you doing today, Helen?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
I'm good! It's so good to be with you guys!
Brandy Archie
Thank you
Emilia Bourland
We're, yeah, we're always so happy to have you here, Helen. Okay, normally this is where we do an icebreaker question, but Helen, we've had you on a bunch of times and this like weird thing happened yesterday, which Brandy, I emailed you about, but I don't know if you saw it yet. And I wanted, since we all here podcast, I wanted to see if Helen, have you seen this or has this happened to you? So I went on to the platform.
that Brandy and I used for podcasting yesterday to grab a couple of reels for social media posts. And I go in there and there's a reel where all of us are babies.
Emilia Bourland
That's the right reaction. Yeah, no. Like the the the podcast platform has somehow turned us into AI version babies of ourselves. As we're talking through this clip, it was the weirdest thing and nothing else was changed. Like we're having a conversation about, I can't remember. All I remember is the fact that we were babies, but we're having a conversation about like some serious topic.
Brandy Archie
I need to see this.
Emilia Bourland
you know, about caregiving and all three of us were, it was so bizarre. I will.
Brandy Archie
It didn't even say like, we made this special little set of clips for you because we think it's cool.
Emilia Bourland
It was like, look what we did. And I was like, did I want you to do that? That is...
Brandy Archie
Ha ha!
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
That's kind of fun though, I like that. I mean, I wouldn't want it all the time. You know, if they just took 20 years off, yeah, if they just took 20 years off, I'd be happy with that.
Brandy Archie
Hey, we should post it on social media to see if works.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, I mean, well, listen, don't even go there because Helen, if you have not seen Helen on the YouTube version of this, you should because she looks fantastic. You cannot believe this woman has been a nurse for over 30 years and has like grandbabies. That's remarkable, remarkable. Best skin ever.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
You're very kind.
Emilia Bourland
But no, yeah, so I was like, Helen, have you had this experience? Have you, have you suddenly been turned into a baby?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
I haven't seen that. And of course, we don't use the same platform that you guys do, but that's crazy. I'd like to see that and see what it looks like.
Emilia Bourland
I'm gonna post it.
Emilia Bourland
I'm gonna post it and who knows maybe it'll do it again maybe it won't. I don't know how to make this happen because I never thought of doing that but it's weird.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
That is kind of weird.
Brandy Archie
And it'll certainly get us some eyeballs on socials, I believe.
Emilia Bourland
I believe.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
It would be so odd to be talking about end of life care and death and dying as babies. Yeah, that seems a little inappropriate, but yeah.
Brandy Archie
as a baby.
Emilia Bourland
As babies, it's just, it does, it's like, it's not like we're talking about zany stuff. Although I will say, Brandy, you are the cutest baby.
Brandy Archie
I'm so glad. I think I was a cute baby in life.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Emilia Bourland
Just adorable with your glasses on and everything. So cute.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Yeah, I've gotta look that up. That sounds good.
Emilia Bourland
I will post it. I will post it. is, if I can find something that doesn't feel like weird to have babies talking about, I'll post it. I'll just post like a little screenshot of it or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. Should we talk about some real stuff here now?
Brandy Archie
A little clip just so we see our baby podcast.
Brandy Archie
We should talk about real stuff.
Emilia Bourland
as adults.
Brandy Archie
I guess that makes sense. mean, we have talked about hospice on the show before and Helen's been on. And the interesting thing I think is that there's so many layers to it. And also it's a thing that we don't talk about it enough. We don't talk about this enough. You talk about plenty cause you have a whole podcast about it, but like in like the bigger world of like healthcare, we don't and as like individuals we don't and they've been.
Emilia Bourland
You
Brandy Archie
many close relationships in my life where people have been on hospice and or maybe needed to be on hospice but didn't want to have that conversation. And so I have like, you can tell me if this is wrong and this might be too spicy, but as a healthcare professional, it seems to me like if somebody, the creation of palliative care as a word is essentially to make us all feel better about talking about hospice care and
that there's really not a thing called palliative care, but you're doing it in order to prepare people to be on hospice. So is that inaccurate? And tell me how you feel about that and what is palliative care and correct this if it's wrong.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
I guess it's inaccurate, but I think that's the perception that a lot of lay people have out in the public. But I think it's a perception that a lot of healthcare providers have too. That palliative care is just a lightish way of saying hospice to make it a little more palatable, know, to ease you into it. These are the people that come and talk to you. It's like pre-hospice. But of course, and that's how it's used sometimes.
Brandy Archie
Yeah.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
but that's not really the way it's intended to use. And there are palliative care teams all over the country who are cringing right about now thinking that that's people's perception of what they do. But yeah, think, yeah.
Emilia Bourland
I was gonna say Brandy, you're gonna get some letters.
Brandy Archie
I mean that's fine, send the letters, this is why we're here.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Well, I mean, she's being honest, but I think that is a lot of people's perception in health care, is it's hospice light or pre-hospice. And that's really not the case.
Brandy Archie
So what are they supposed to be doing? What are the differences that we should be able to clearly identify between palliative care hospitals so we can refer better and know what services to send people to?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
So palliative care, the structure of it is very similar and the philosophy is very similar to hospice. There's an interdisciplinary team, they address quality of life, but this is while the patient is undergoing treatment. It can be for a chronic illness, it can be for a serious illness, but the patient is still receiving treatment and pursuing treatment. Hospice, the goals of care have changed. You don't necessarily look for a cure.
You're not looking for curative treatment or aggressive treatment. So here's what I like to teach people about palliative care and hospice. All of hospice includes palliative care because palliative care is about comfort management, symptom management. But not all palliative care includes hospice. But it is confusing. And the biggest thing you need to know about palliative care is ask for it early.
Ask for it early. And if you get a pushback from your healthcare team where they say, we don't think you're ready for that, that means that they have a misconception about what palliative care is and they're confusing it with hospice. Because you can use and utilize palliative care much earlier in a chronic illness or a serious illness than you can hospice.
Emilia Bourland
of care itself is also not curative care, right? Can you talk a little bit about the difference between those things?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Yes, so curative care, those are your oncology treatments, your chemo, your studies, things like that. Palliative care is supportive when it comes to symptom management and quality of life support. And because it's also interdisciplinary, so social workers, chaplains, physicians, nurse practitioners, they're also supporting the patient and the caregiver or the family that's providing care. So it's easy to see why people get
hospice and palliative care mixed up. Also in healthcare, from what I hear from palliative care workers is that their teams are being utilized to have advanced care planning conversations almost exclusively. That is one of the things that a palliative care team can do. They can have those advanced care plan conversations where the conversations get dicey.
Brandy Archie
Mm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
They're hard to have, they're sensitive topics, and maybe the treatment team is not very adept or very comfortable, or maybe that family needs additional support. Maybe it's a complicated or a complex patient. So a lot of times, palliative care teams are called in to help initiate those conversations. Another thing that palliative care teams do is they sort of act as translators.
and mediators between a healthcare team that's providing aggressive care and that family and patient. I've heard a palliative social worker describe it as, you know, they're in a case conference where all the healthcare team is there, the family's there, the patient's there, and the palliative care team is there as well. So when a complicated explanation of treatment or plan of care is given,
the palliative care team is there to say, so what I hear you saying is, or can you clarify this piece because it's really technical and we need some clarification on this. And it helps that family to receive information that is more in terms that they can understand.
So they function a little bit closer, I would say, in relationship with the family and the caregiver, the family caregiver and the patient, to help clarify, to help be an advocate for the patient, to explain what's happening and to get those additional further details. They serve a lot of roles. But unless somebody knows to ask,
for a palliative care consult and says, it's not too early, we're not talking about hospice, we're looking for palliative care and symptom management, quality of life support. You know, a lot of times that palliative care consult's not gonna happen.
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.
Brandy Archie
So how do you get that palliative care consult to happen? I know that hospice has its like, what do want to say? Like it's prescription basically, meaning like if you're at a certain end of, you think that life may end in a six months and if they're not wanting to have curative treatment, like there's some things that be like, okay, you qualify for hospice. What makes you qualify for, yeah, what's the criteria? That's the word I'm looking for, the criteria for palliative care.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
There's a criteria, yeah. Well, palliative, yeah, palliative care, if you're experiencing a chronic illness, you need support with quality of life and symptom management, you can ask for a palliative care consult. It's as simple as asking for one. What challenges,
Palliative care is that it's not available everywhere in the US Rural areas or underserved areas medically underserved population areas in the country You're not going to be able to get a palliative care consult because there won't be palliative care teams or physicians in your area Yeah, it's a relatively new specialty in the big picture of health care. I think it's only been around 20 years or so Sort of make some the new kid on the block
but in rural areas, there are just not lot of palliative care providers.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, and that's really such a shame. mean, you so often people who live in rural areas struggle so much to access health care and a variety of health care providers, quality care, not because the providers that are there aren't doing their best, but simply because there's more needs than they can possibly meet. Right. How do you think is someone in that situation? Like, how can we how can we
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Right.
Emilia Bourland
advocate for better access for palliative care teams in all corners of health care and all corners of the country? Is telehealth and palliative care something that can work?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
I think that's definitely an option, telehealth, absolutely. Because you don't necessarily need a hands-on in-person physical assessment for some of these things. A case conference with a team can be had via telehealth. That's a wonderful thing about Zoom. I think another way we can support getting palliative care to be more widespread and more utilized is having these conversations like we're having on your Care Lab podcast today.
We talk about palliative care all the time on the Heart of Hospice podcast because it's integrated in everything we do in hospice. But I think educating the public so that they can advocate and ask for themselves. I think that's the biggest issue is most people don't know to ask for
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brandy Archie
Yeah.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Yeah, so education and of course we've got, I live in Texas and Amelia and I practice in Texas and we know that there are rural areas in Texas because we are so large where there just aren't enough care providers. And for a specialty that's smaller, it's not as well known, lot of healthcare providers don't know how to use it. You're not gonna have those providers in the rural areas. So.
Brandy Archie
Mm-hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Unfortunately, some people are going to go without access. It's a reality of the healthcare industry, sadly.
Brandy Archie
So to just like put another like fine point on this, if I go to the doctor and I get diagnosed with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or COPD, any of those kinds of things that are gonna be lifelong conditions, then it would be appropriate even at that time to be like, okay, can I talk to somebody in palliative care and say that to your primary care physician? And if I did that, cause I see you shake your head yes.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
yeah.
Brandy Archie
What might be the good benefit of doing that at such an early stage, like right when you get diagnosed with a chronic condition?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Well, it's a great way to start having goals of care conversations, advanced care plan conversations, which always need to happen upstream regardless of what your diagnosis is or even if there's a diagnosis. Healthy younger people need to have advanced care plan conversations. So if you say, for instance, COPD, right, respiratory illness, it is a thing that people deal with. It's one of the
top five diagnoses respiratory illness for terminal illness and hospice. But if you are diagnosed with it, it impacts your ability to function your quality of life, your family relationships, your ability to earn. It affects you emotionally, mentally, psychosocially, spiritually. So isn't the palliative care team a perfect fit for a situation like that? Yes.
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
So yeah, that's any of those diagnoses, the neurodegenerative disorders, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia, because that length of disease trajectory can be really long and very isolating for caregivers. Get that palliative care team involved earlier. Start having those conversations about palliative care and how that works. And then when the time comes,
when there needs to be a transition to hospice, palliative care teams are really, really intelligent and knowledgeable about what hospice care looks like and when the time has come to make that jump to hospice.
Emilia Bourland
But asking for palliative care and choosing palliative care, whatever point you are in your journey, early in the journey, doesn't mean that you're giving up on treatment. It doesn't mean that you are throwing in the towel. It doesn't mean that you're signing up for hospice. It just means that you're asking for some help, achieving a better quality of life while you are working through whatever medical treatment you have to have for whatever disease process you're in.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Exactly, exactly. And it's really important for the consumer of the healthcare, the patient, or the decision maker to know that so that when they go to their healthcare team, maybe the healthcare team needs educating too.
Brandy Archie
So if we, let's say we choose having palliative care, does that preclude me from being able to have home health or go to outpatient therapy or anything like that? This is like another provider that gets to come alongside you on this journey in dealing with your health care.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Right, the way I like to think about it is like a big tire with all these different sections. So you've got the patient and the caregiver in the middle because it's all about them, right? With when you incorporate an additional specialty. So say you have a cancer diagnosis, you have your oncologist, you may have your primary care doctor, you may have a radiation oncologist.
Brandy Archie
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
you may have home health say that maintains your port just you know just creating a scenario and so you have this circle that surrounds the patient and the family this circle of care of all these different specialties and disciplines so if you're adding palliative care in there it just makes that circle of support fuller more robust
and that's such a great way to meet the needs, all the different types of needs of a patient and family. What I like to tell patient families is if you remove one of those things, say you decide no palliative care or you decide no home health, that part of the tire goes flat in that circle of support. And so the tire gets off balance. You have needs that don't get met.
The tire flops, you know, if you keep trying to drive on it. The tire flaps and flops. The ride is bumpy, which is another way of saying the care is not as good and it's more difficult for the patient and the family. So having a palliative care team alongside all these other disciplines and specialties that are providing support really rounds out the care.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, that makes so much sense. Talking about home health along with palliative care, can you get home health at the same time that you are on hospice? how do these two things look different from each other? Because I think home health and hospice are also sometimes feel interchangeable for people because you have a group of
Brandy Archie
you
Emilia Bourland
Maybe nurses and therapists or care professionals that are going to someone's home and they're helping with things and like, what's the real difference?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
So when you think about the structure of a home health team versus a hospice team, definitely multidisciplinary because of all the therapies, nurses, and aides that are included in home health. Hospice is the same way, but our disciplines are a little bit different. We also have therapies, but we utilize them very sparingly, OT, PT, speech therapy. We also incorporate social worker.
and chaplain, which is not typically part of a home health team. But the focus for home health is very different. Home health is about getting you back on your feet, healing the wound. You have a definite goal and an end point for that. You want them to make progress. And the end goal is they are healed or cured or rehabbed or strengthened or reconditioned, whatever the goal is.
and then they're discharged, right? The whole goal is to get them independent as possible and to discharge them off. Well, with hospice, our goals are completely different. We're about quality of life, we're about comfort. And I guess you don't want to say your goal is a death, your goal is a soft landing, a good death of the patient's choosing.
So there are big differences there. Now you asked if hospice and home health can be given at the same time. You can receive those two at the same time. Typically no. Typically no. The only way, and this gets into some regulatory stuff, if there's something about the hospice patient that's very complicated, like a wound that requires a wound vac or something like that, and the hospice does not have nursing staff that can manage that,
they can contract it out to home health. But virtually all the care of a hospice patient is the responsibility of the hospice agency. So it's very unusual that you would have both. It's a very rare practice and it gets very complicated for the agency. And really for continuity of care and for cohesiveness.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
among the team and how the patient's being cared for, it's much better if it's just the hospice team providing the care. But yeah, it can get a little confusing between the two.
Emilia Bourland
Brandy, we can't hear you. Or I can't.
Brandy Archie
market. Okay, so my question is who ends up at a hospice house versus who ends up having hospice at their home? Are there criteria for being at a hospice house? Is it a choice or like how does that happen?
Emilia Bourland
Good question.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Oh, that is a very good question because the first thing you need to know, anybody needs to know about hospice is it's not a place. Hospice is a type of care, a philosophy of care like oncology is a type of care. Pulmonology is a type of care. People have a tendency to say, oh, well, they've gone to hospice. What that means is they're receiving hospice care. There are facilities.
that specialize in end of life and hospice care, but the majority of the care of hospice patients in the United States is provided in their private residences, whether it's a private home, a nursing home, an assisted living, halfway house. We even have folks that we see who are living on the streets, people who are unhoused. So there's a lot of confusion, you you go to hospice. That's not how it works.
Now, hospice houses and hospice facilities, there are several different types. Some of them are nonprofit homes that accommodate folks that don't have caregivers at home. You know, maybe somebody who has an elderly spouse who is unable to manage the care or someone who is unhoused who has gotten to the point where they have to have around the clock support. Those places...
The criteria for admission to those hospice houses is usually based on whether they have a hospice agency already taking care of them or it's prorated according to income. Some of them don't charge anything. It just depends on the individual place. There are other hospice facilities that are what we call inpatient units. And these are for folks that are in some sort of symptom crisis.
that can't be managed at home by their hospice team. So it's for short term. It's not intended for them to stay room and board and live there. It's for them to come in. They have around the clock nursing support, symptom management until the symptoms resolve or the patient dies. So I think those facilities have a tendency to confuse people about where you get hospice.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
It's just a little complicated because there several different types. There's some nuances between the different facilities. But most of our folks receive care at home.
Emilia Bourland
And if you needed a different one of those options, your hospice team should talk with you about that, right?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Absolutely. So especially if you're in a symptom management crisis, your hospice team, the physician, the nurse practitioner and the nurses, they're going to be on that. They're going to be managing that and making changes. And they will talk with you and tell you, we don't think this is managed well at home. We'd like to admit you to an inpatient facility where we do general inpatient care. Also,
I think it's important for patients and their caregivers, their decision makers, to understand that this is part of the care that they are entitled to inside hospice. So if they feel like things have gotten out of control and the symptoms aren't being managed well, then they can say, hey, we feel like this isn't going well, the symptoms aren't managed, the pain is still out of control. Where do you do inpatient care so we can get a better handle on this? It's advocacy.
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brandy Archie
Yeah, and it's so hard to be an advocate when you don't know what all the options are or what things you could be asking for, know, especially at a time where it's already stressful. So I'm grateful for you to explain in detail. OK, so one more wrench in the thing. So when people talk about comfort care, where does that fall on the spectrum? Are they actually saying something that they don't know that they're saying? Like, what does that mean?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Comfort care, think, sometimes is used as a generic term because we don't know how to define palliative care well. I personally have used it myself because I haven't been on a palliative care team as a specific separate specialty. So in the past, I have used that to describe palliative care as comfort care. And because palliative care is part of hospice,
and comfort is what we do. It's a really confusing term. It's very general, very generic.
Brandy Archie
So doesn't actually mean anything. Like people are using, it doesn't have a defined definition, I guess is what I'm saying.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Yeah, it's not definitive, no.
Brandy Archie
It's not a type of care. It's a way to describe care.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Yeah, I would agree that's a good way to describe it.
Emilia Bourland
Okay, so last question before we wrap up for today. What are some signs that the person, that your loved one or the person that you care for might actually be ready for hospice?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
There's a big laundry list of this big laundry list. So when you think about
what a hospice patient looks like, somebody who qualifies for hospice. For one thing, they would have to have a terminal illness, and that's a designation that's given by their physician. And a terminal prognosis or terminal illness means it's anticipated that they have a life expectancy of six months or less. So the question is asked, would you be surprised if your person died in the next six months based on
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
the disease trajectory and where they are. If your person's been to the hospital, multiple hospitalizations, multiple infections in the last year to six months, upper respiratory infections, UTIs, those kinds of things are very common and can become very frequent for somebody who is getting towards the end of a diagnosis. If they have
gotten all the treatment they can get. They're on all the meds. They basically maxed out, optimally treated with medications with limited improvement or no improvement. Or they're at the point where, say cancer treatment, chemotherapy, either impacts them so greatly that the burden outweighs the benefit of the treatment.
That's another criteria piece that we look for. If a person has decided, I don't want to go back to the hospital, I no longer want dialysis, I don't want to be treated for this, no more chemotherapy, no more physical therapy. Another thing about hospice criteria as far as qualifying that people need to know is you don't have to be home bound. That's one of the big differences between hospice and home health.
There's no homebound requirement for hospice patients. You are free to go wherever you are able to go. But most people, they've experienced a physical decline. They may see a lot of falls, a lot of falls. Their safety has been compromised. They may have injuries in the last year, know, falls with skin tears, head lacerations, things like that that's very common. We also see
folks that have deteriorated mentally and in their capacity to care for themselves in the last six months to a year. And so you see that laundry list of what we would look for in somebody who's quote unquote ready for hospice. It's really pretty, it's pretty broad and there are a lot of different things, know. It's a huge checklist and you can go through, but what I find is when
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
people look at a checklist like that, that's actually something I provide in my hospice navigation services. When people go through and look at that checklist, all of a sudden there's a light bulb and they realize, wow, we're a lot further along in this disease than I had realized. know, sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. So I think it's a lot like that.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, sometimes like you're just so close to something. You can just be so close to something that it's hard to really see everything that's going on. So would you talk a little bit more about like, if how do people reach you for hospice navigations services? How you know, what does that look like?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
So Hospice Navigation Services, you can book online. I offer a free 30 minute consultation session and I offer a 60 minute full session. I answer questions. I will help you troubleshoot the care you're already getting if you have concerns. I will talk to you about hospice shopping. One thing about the Navigation Services is I always want to empower people to be advocates and informed consumers.
of the care that they're getting or going to get. So I'll tell you how to shop, but I'm not going to tell you this is an agency you should use. I'll tell you where to look to look at their ratings and whether they're non-profit or for-profit, that, you know, whatever aligns with your values. So I can teach you how to hospice shop. But I'm all about empowering people with their own rights. So getting
education from a navigation session so they get better care along the way. It's easy to book. You can go to theheartofhospice.com. There's an online booking system for either a 30 minute session or a one hour session. If you do a one hour session, you can have up to three people on a video call. And that way, if you've got a caregiving village, and hopefully you do because it takes a lot of work to do this as a caregiver,
Everybody's getting the same information at the same time, which I think is very important. Even if you have somebody who's living remotely at a distance, they might still be involved as a caregiver, but not boots on the ground at the bedside. So it's really important to give the same information from the same person all at the same time, so it unites a caregiving village. So those are all things we do through navigation sessions.
Emilia Bourland
Brandy?
Brandy Archie
Well, I was just going to add that I think that's such an awesome service and I'm so glad that you're offering it in that way because it can feel really overwhelming and daunting and to do that shopping or to understand all the things that we just talked about even today. And it's such a touchy, stressful time and subject and to have the most information possible available to you when you
need to navigate that is like the ideal thing. And unfortunately, most of us end up wanting to act like it's not happening and, you know, be surprised when all of a sudden a lot more help is needed and we're in different situation. And so thank you for all the work that you do for educating and to be able to make your knowledge available to people on a regular basis if they want to work with you. And so
Thank you for coming on CareLab. And if you all made it to the end of this episode, we are grateful for you for listening and we really would love it if you would share it with someone else. So someone else who needs to hear this, please do share it, download a couple of episodes and also tell us what you want to talk about. Our goal is to provide education to you. And so if you have a question specific, great, ask it in the comments. If you just
are more interested in another topic, let us know so we can find an expert guest to come talk to us about that. And just make sure you listen again next Friday on CareLab. Thanks, everybody.
Emilia Bourland
Thank you
Do us a favor and subscribe to the CareLab podcast on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts! It will help others find our conversations and grow the community and you’ll stay updated with the latest insights and expert advice on elder care.
