A few of the hospice care positions offered in Austin, Texas, include hospice nurse, therapist, and family counselor. The hospice nurse position aims to train aspiring students to learn how to ensure that everything is in place when carrying out a care plan. The significance of this is to reduce too much work that nurses have to perform. Typically, too much work compromises the quality of services that a nurse offers (Aldridge, 2018). The position of a therapist is meant to train students on how to assist patients in dealing with mental disorders while that of a family counselor is intended to equip learners with the knowledge and skills on how to help the loved ones of a patient deal with difficult emotions.
Some of the qualifications for the above positions include a high school diploma or a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree. Students are, therefore, supposed to have a particular position in mind that they want to pursue. This is the beginning of selecting the qualification that the students want to attain. In the case that a student desire to, for example, offer nursing services in hospice care, they are required to at least achieve a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree. This is because having a high school diploma is not enough to guarantee one to work in these positions competently (Ong, 2016). Care providers that have attained bachelor’s degree are also advised to advance their education.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Essential services that they provide include working together with the nurse to monitor the progress of the patient and also offer counseling services to family members of the patients suffering from a terminal illness. Hospice care providers involved in counseling loved ones of the patients aim to ensure that this group is not psychologically affected by the toll the disease or condition has taken on their family member, especially when the patient finally dies. Most family members tend to develop PTSD whenever they lose their loved ones (Aldridge, 2018). This especially applies to those that don’t get timely counseling services on how to deal with the loss.
Challenges facing hospice workers include burnout due to too much work and also low pay. The exhaustion comes at times as a result of staff shortages or longer shift hours with a few hours of rest. Low pay demotivates qualified hospice care providers resulting in boycotts and hesitation to fill vacant positions. Further, low pay may result in staff turnover. Thus, the hospice workers may resort to seeking better opportunities elsewhere. Also, as Ong (2016) ascertains, low pay prevents these workers from concentrating on their current job. This explains why poor performance is a significant issue in many health care facilities, where such hospice care providers work. Consequently, these facilities have a low retention rate of these workers, which compromises their corporate culture.
Another Challenge facing hospice workers is depression, especially when dealing with patients suffering from severe illnesses. The depression worsens in cases where these workers are handling a situation where a patient has lost his or her life. The issue of depression mainly affects hospice workers that are not adept at maintaining stable emotions or are emotional. The first thing that these healthcare providers develop is stress resulting from caring for the patient (Aldridge, 2018). The stress transforms into depression after some time. In the worst cases, some hospice care providers might end up contemplating suicide.
In conclusion, hospice positions in Austin, Texas, can be a part-time or full time. On a part-time basis, hospice healthcare providers are required to work for a few hours a day every week. Here, what matters are the terms on which a hospice healthcare provider has been hired. Hospice healthcare services in Austin are provided on a 24 hours basis. Most of the health facilities have organized their hospice workers into night shifts and day shifts. Usually, there is no discrimination in deciding whether a hospice worker is going to work on a night shift or day shift. These shifts are also never permanent because the workers are alternated continuously.
References
Aldridge, M. D., Epstein, A. J., Brody, A. A., Lee, E. J., Morrison, R. S., & Bradley, E. H. (2018). Association between hospice spending on patient care and rates of hospitalization and Medicare expenditures of hospice enrollees. Journal of palliative medicine , 21 (1), 55-61.
Ong, J., Brennsteiner, A., Chow, E., & Hebert, R. S. (2016). Correlates of family satisfaction with hospice care: general inpatient hospice care versus routine home hospice care. Journal of palliative medicine , 19 (1), 97-100.
