Hospice Care

Hospice care is end-of-life care provided by health professionals and volunteers.  They give medical, psychological and spiritual support.  The goal of hospice care is to help people who are dying have peace, comfort and dignity.  The caregivers try to control pain and other symptoms so a person can remain as alert and comfortable as possible.  Hospice programs also provide services to support a patient's family.

Usually, a hospice patient is expected to live 6 months or less.  Hospice care can take place:

• At home
• At a hospice center
• In a hospital
• In a skilled nursing facility

In its earliest origins, Hospice was a place of shelter for travelers on a difficult journey.  For patients, families, and friends faced with a terminal illness. Hospice means a place to turn and a team of people to be by your side.

Hospice is a philosophy of care.  The hospice philosophy or viewpoint accepts death as the final stage of life.  The goal of hospice is to help patients live their last days as alert and pain-free as possible.  Hospice care tries to manage symptoms so that a person's last days may be spent with dignity and quality, surrounded by their loved ones.  Hospice affirms life and neither hastens nor postpones death.  Hospice care treats the person rather than the disease, it focuses on quality rather than length of life.  Hospice care is family-centered - - it includes the patient and the family in making decisions.

This care is planned to cover 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Hospice care can be given in the patient's home, a hospital, nursing home, or private hospice facility.  Most hospice care in the United States is given in the home, with family members or friends serving as the main hands-on caregivers.  Because of this, a patient getting home hospice care must have a caregiver in the home with them 24 hours a day.

Hospice care is used when you can no longer be helped by curative treatment, and you are expected to live about 6 months or less if the illness runs its usual course.  Hospice gives you palliative care, which is treatment to help relieve disease-related symptoms, but not cure the disease;  its main purpose is to improve your quality of life.  You, your family, and your doctor decide together when Hospice care should begin.

One of the problems with hospice is that it is often not started soon enough.  Sometimes the doctor, patient, or family member will resist hospice because he or she thinks it means you're "giving up", or that there's no hope.  This is not true.  If you get better or the cancer goes into remission, you can be taken out of the hospice program and go into active cancer treatment.  You can go back to hospice care later, if needed.  But the hope that hospice brings is the hope of a quality life, making the best of each day during the last states of advanced illness.

Hospice brings together a team of specially trained professionals and volunteers who work with the patient's doctor to provide a plan of care woven with the dignity of choice and power of love.  Making no attempt to hasten or delay death, Hospice focuses on controlling the patient's pain and symptoms, while helping family and friends cope with the stress and emotions illness can bring.  From the first days of a life-limiting illness to long past the loss of a loved one, Hospice offers a mainstay of resources and respite, help and hope to affirm a meaningful quality of life for all at the journey's end.