Hospice Nurse: Job Description, Education, Skills and Abilities, Earnings and Outlook
Submitted by: paula
Job Overview Hospice nurses are also well known as hospice workers, palliative medicine nurses or palliative medicine workers. As the title implies, they are registered or licensed nurses who are trained to take care of people who are in the terminal stage of their diseases thus, in need of major assistance in all aspects while living in their homes or confined in a hospice care unit. For those who provide hospice care to individuals in their homes, they travel and visit the patients then spend the rest of the day with them. Those who work in home cares or nursing homes as well as on hospital departments work on shifts to render palliative and overall nursing services to them. They work under the supervision of a doctor in charge of the patients that they take care of.
Education, Knowledge and Trainings Required
If you are interested in building a career in this field, take as much as communication, science and art courses as you can during your high school years. As for the post secondary training, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing is needed as well as a possession of a license to practice as a registered nurse. This can be obtained by passing a state board's examination for nurses. To be able to concentrate on this specific nursing field, there are trainings that are available in palliative care or hospice nursing that can be taken as a Master's degree in any of the Nursing schools that offer it.
Skills and Abilities
The most important skills in nursing the terminally ill are the helping skills that will promote an easier rendering of services to those who are in need. Empathy and patience are attitudes that will help in the practice of the job.
The basic nursing skills such as skills in different types of feeding, respiratory assistance, promoting mobility and elimination, administering medications and giving psychological support are expected of them.
Duties
All nurses practice the nursing process in any health care setting. This is also true in hospice care. They assess, plan, intervene and evaluate the care that they render to them every now and then. Part of the work is to collaborate with the physicians with the drug regimen that the patients should take as most of them are chronically in pain. They also collaborate with the allied health professionals such as the nutritionists and physical therapists as needed. Basically, they assist the patients in all their needs so as to survive even in the last periods of their lives maintaining a dignified and a more comfortable living before their expiration.
Earnings and Job Outlook
The job outlook for this kind of profession is expected to be very good as there is a growing population of the elderly and terminally ill patients.The average salary of a hospice care nurse is 60,000 U.S. dollars per year.
Paula Hiz is a researcher and a human resource specialist who helps newly graduates, job applicants and post graduate professionals be aware of their job opportunities and available trainings for skills and practice upgrading.
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