The End of Life Doesn’t Need to Hurt

EPain relief should always be one of the top priorities in the treatment of terminal patients. Too much emphasis on treating other symptoms or the underlying disease in the face of a poor prognosis can mean those terminal patients will have to wait needlessly to receive hospice care and to benefit from a more aggressive pain management strategy.

Hospice is geared towards providing relief from pain, both physical and emotional. The whole idea of hospice care is to make the time that terminal patients have left as comfortable and enjoyable as they can be and to give them the opportunity to die with dignity. Even with regular administration of pain medication, terminal patients may still need higher doses at times or a change in their medication routine in order to manage their pain.

Our hospice offers a 24-hour phone number so there’s no need to delay in getting help for terminally ill patients. Patients and caregivers tend to have misgivings about using morphine and other opioids for pain management. It’s understandable, given the potentially addictive nature of these drugs, but these fears are mostly without foundation. When given solely for pain management, the risk of physical dependency is extremely low. Opioid addiction is largely psychological in nature and people at the end of their lives receiving these medications for pain control are highly unlikely to become addicted to these drugs. Addiction and physical dependency on a drug are two different things. People who take a particular opioid habitually may become physically dependent and experience withdrawal if they cease taking the medication suddenly. However, this is typically not a concern in end-of-life care.

The more that terminal patients and their loved ones know about their pain management options and the higher priority that pain management is made by physicians, the higher the quality of life that can be enjoyed by people at the end of their lives. Death may be something that is inevitable for all of us, but it shouldn’t have to be painful when there is relief available.