Hi there, new to the group. I'm a nurse practitioner with a heart for those suffering with chronic illness at the end of their life. I am a Christian and have seen through my career in the hospitals, Palliative Care, and Internal medicine how children become caregivers in the final months / days / years of their loved one's illness. I lived in South Padre Island for a while and saw a device that allowed a person to go into the water, off the sand, and back to their condo (like a trike which floated) and BAM, I got an idea to have "one last vacation" - a week or long weekend at a VRBO type of facility, where nurses tend to the patient 24/7, counselors tend to the hearts of the patient and their loved ones, focusing on grieving, bereavement, forgiveness, joy, and allowing children to be children again, not caregiver, allowing healing before death, allowing time to re-energize spiritually, emotionally, physically while staff cared for your every need. Do you feel this is a service which is desperately needed as much as I do? God has really laid this on my heart and I just need some feedback. The price would be probably hefty to hire staff, counselors, VRBO, etc, but I thought maybe I could work with churches / hospices that could sponsor families so that this expense could be subsidized. Thoughts? TYIA for your feedback.
And as far as churches and/or hospices providing funds to offset, most of those organizations are operating on a shoestring budget to begin with, they're not going to be able to provide any sort of meaningful funding.
Not to mention the inevitable lawsuits that would happen when the patient died of their disease while "vacationing" and the family blamed the facility for "hastening" their death...we see posts here ***all the time!!***, people saying "hospice killed my loved one...". The legal expenses alone would ruin you.
I think you're very kind-hearted to try and find a way to ease the anguish of patients/family/caregivers going through the hospice journey, but this idea is not practical on so many levels.
That’s a lot of stress to pack and travel on top of dealing with end of life . Most on hospice are too sick to travel anyway .
I think the time to fulfill bucket list wishes is well before hospice comes on board as most patients are way too ill or fragile to be spending time on a beach! I commend you for the thought, though.
the bigger issue is the need for subsidized assisted living , memory care , so LO’s are safe and cared for without their adult children having to quit work to take care of the elderly . Many states only pay for SNF through Medicaid .
A subsidized vacation with 24/7 one to one nursing care seems pretty far fetched .
Also I think in order for a caregiver to get respite , they have to actually be totally removed from the caregiving . Even watching the staff tend to a LO is not a vacation .
I went as far away as Hawaii from the East Coast once during caregiving . After a few days I finally relaxed.
Better to give the vacation to the caregiver, and get respite care in for the patient in their home, or in a hospice facility.
Sounds ideal but, completely unrealistic for hospice patients.
What is really needed, affordable respite for family caregivers, before the end is near for their loved one so they DO NOT become a statistic.