Palliative and hospice care in the prehospital setting

Palliative and hospice care in the prehospital setting 
EMS1 - EMS Training and Education; by Nicholas Maxwell, MD; 10/10/24 
Additional training can help providers who want to do right by patients involved in hospice and end-of-life care.  ... Education in EMS often focuses on how to treat acutely ill and injured patients with the goal of saving lives and preventing serious, long-lasting negative outcomes. Since their training is so focused on acute, life-threatening illness, they are often called to help those who are acutely ill/injured and/or dying. However, at most EMS education programs, very little, if any, time is spent teaching how to care for patients who are not interested in resuscitation and life-saving interventions, such as hospice patients. Hospice patients in particular flip the oft assumed goal of resuscitation and life-saving interventions that EMS is so adeptly trained to execute. In these patients, resuscitation is essentially contraindicated, and the primary goal is often to prevent/relieve suffering, even if it means death comes quicker than if you were to provide aggressive interventions. ...