What is Hospice?

Hospice is a type of health care that focuses on the relief of a terminally ill patient’s distress and symptoms and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs during the final stages of life. Hospice care prioritizes comfort and quality of life by reducing pain and suffering. Hospice care provides an alternative to therapies focused on life-prolonging measures that may be difficult, be likely to cause more symptoms, or are not aligned with a person’s goals.

Hospices care for people where they live. Although some hospice care is provided in hospitals, in-hospice facilities or nursing homes, most patients are cared for in the place they call home, which is where most people would prefer to be. Hospice provides all medications, services, and equipment necessary. Hospice also offers bereavement care (grief support) for up to 13 months.

HOSPICE PHILOSOPHY

Hospice care provides compassionate care for people in the last phases of incurable disease or simply aging so that they may live as fully and comfortably as possible. The hospice philosophy accepts death as the final stage of life: it affirms life but does not try to hasten or postpone death. It concerns itself with providing the individual and the family with support and choices so that everyone can be fully present.

 WHO CAN BENEFIT
  FROM HOSPICE?

Given that we are all mortal, eventually most of us. Hospice wraps itself around a patient and family to provide support during a difficult and confusing time. Most of us have never been in the presence of a person towards the end of their life, much less actually dying. Hospice staff can explain what is going on, how to take care of the person, what to expect. Medicare certified hospices must have a 24/7 telephone line to call when crises or questions arise, so no one is alone trying to figure out what to do or whether or not to call 911. Hospice can advise on and provide medications to make the patient more comfortable and instruct the caregivers in their use.