Home Health Care and Hospice

Paper Summary:

There has been a massive shift in thinking about chronic pain and pain management, from seeing pain as a secondary characteristic to the disease, to seeing pain as a primary problem. The writer explores the issue and the surrounding controversy. The paper looks at the ways in which financial cutbacks in home health care and hospice have led to fewer employees and a stronger reliance on pain medication.

From the Paper:

"In an article in the Columbian (Oregon leads quiet revolution, 1999), a graphic example of one of the ongoing problems in the management of chronic pain was illustrated in the story of a man who hurt his back in 1988. Although in chronic pain, his doctors hesitated to provide him with narcotics for long-term pain relief because of the fear of drug addiction. Despite the fact that things are changing, pain management in home health care and hospice has often been shaped more by politics than by scientific knowledge about the effects of pain and its management. Both doctors and patients still exhibit resistance to appropriate pain management, fearing addiction, acting from ignorance, or feeling that patients should simply be more stoic. In the following pages, the intention is to explore this issue in more detail."

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