Hospice Care

Introduction to Hospice Care

Hospice Care provides services at home or in a home-like setting to persons with life-threatening and terminal illnesses and their families. Hospice Care aim is to help people live as comfortably and as fully as possible. Hospice Care focus is on caring, not curing and on life, not death.

Hospice Care is usually provided by an interdisciplinary team of professionals and volunteers including doctors, nurses, therapists, clergy, homemakers and other counselors and caregivers. The Hospice Care goal of the team is to ensure that the emotional, spiritual, physical and practical needs of both the client and their family are met. Typically, people do not enter hospice care until their projected final few months of life.

Hospice Care Program may provide some or all of the following: emotional support, collaboration and coordination with other agencies, personal care, respite care, spiritual support, financial and legal planning, family support and bereavement support.

Most Hospice Care providers are charitable, not-profit groups that provide the services at no cost to the resident.

More About Hospice Care

Hospice Care is aimed at relief of suffering and improving the quality of life for persons who are living with or dying from advanced illness or are bereaved. Hospice Care is a special kind of health care for individuals and families who are living with a life-threatening illness that is usually at an advanced stage. The goal of Hospice Care is comfort and dignity for the person living with the illness as well as the best quality of life for both this person and his or her family. A "family" is whoever the person says his or her family is. It may include relatives, partners and friends.

An important objective of Hospice Care is relief of pain and other symptoms. Hospice Care is planned to meet not only physical needs but also the psychological, social, cultural, emotional and spiritual needs of each person and family. Hospice Care may be the main focus of care when a cure for the illness is no longer possible. Hospice Care services help people in later life who are ill to live out their remaining time in comfort and dignity.

Hospice Care services are helpful not only when a person is approaching death but also at earlier stages in the illness. Hospice Care may be combined with treatments aimed at reducing or curing the illness, such as chemotherapy. Families also benefit from support when their loved one is dying and after his or her death.

Tips on Choosing Hospice Care

Feel free to contact us at 1-800-311-CARE or info@thecareguide.com should you have any questions or require further assistance in finding appropriate hospice care.