STEVE EMBER: Doctor Foley notes another development in pain care. It is the continual monitoring, or observation, of patients’ conditions. A continually monitored person is not left alone to suffer.
Kathleen Foley was named to head Sloan Kettering’s new Pain Service within the Department of Neurology in nineteen eighty-one. It was America’s first such hospital medical service to identify itself this way. Today, the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center operates a pain and symptom-control service for all its cancer patients.
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BOB DOUGHTY: An international movement called hospice also has greatly improved pain care for the dying. Hospice care helps people whose doctors confirm that they have only a limited time to live. These patients suffer from a number of sicknesses and conditions.
Hospice care can be given in hospitals, centers for patients and older adults, and patients’ homes. Doctors, nurses, social workers and others work with patients and their families to raise the quality of a patient’s last days. These medical experts are trained in the safe administration of pain-killing drugs. Their use can prevent or greatly reduce suffering.
STEVE EMBER: Hospice care may have begun in Europe’s Middle Ages. In those days, religious workers cared for sick travelers at shelters near holy places.
Centuries later, a British doctor became an activist for better care for the dying in the nineteen forties. With financial aid, Cicely Saunders established Saint Christopher’s Hospice in London. She studied pain management efforts in the United States, which she said were better than those of Britain. Her efforts met a longtime need. News of her work traveled.
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2013-11-25
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