Multidisciplinary home visits, end-of-life care — tailored support for patients and families
Seoul's Eunpyeong-gu is running a program called "Eunpyeong Onsaeng," a home-based end-of-life care service, to provide tailored support for terminally ill patients who wish to spend their final days in familiar surroundings.
Eunpyeong Onsaeng is a locally specialized integrated medical and long-term care project that supports patients enrolled in the district's integrated care system who wish to remain at home during the end of life.
A multidisciplinary team from a long-term care home medical center — comprising doctors, nurses and social workers — visits patients at home to provide medical services. Once a patient is confirmed to be in the end-of-life stage, the team arranges additional care services as needed.
Key support includes case management and community resource referrals, monitoring and management of end-of-life signs and symptoms with guidance on preparing for a home death, registration and counseling for advance directives on life-sustaining treatment, and provision of care kits.
Alongside this, the program connects patients with services covering daily living assistance, meal support and residential environment improvements, and uses hometown love donation funds to supply nutritional meals tailored to each patient's condition.
In one case, a patient with stage-four bladder cancer who had stopped chemotherapy and was being cared for by family at home applied for integrated care and was referred to Eunpyeong Onsaeng.
The implementing agency guided the patient and family on the life-sustaining treatment decision system and end-of-life care options, and provided care kits, diapers and cancer-specific nutritional supplements to help them prepare for the end of life at home.
Eunpyeong-gu plans to continue monitoring patients and their families and to connect them with home nursing and hospice services as needed.
"Through Eunpyeong Onsaeng, we are helping terminally ill patients prepare for a dignified end of life in the place they have called home," District Mayor Kim Mi-kyung said. "We will continue to provide care that respects the wishes of patients and their families."
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