Just what is hospice? Hospice is a special way of caring for people whose life expectancy is measured in months rather than years and for whom treatment for cure no longer seems appropriate. It’s a way for patients to remain pain-free in familiar surroundings – most often at home – near the people who love them.

Medical care doesn’t stop when a patient chooses hospice, but it does shift focus from life-prolonging treatment to comfort care. The emphasis is on the individual and the quality and significance of that person’s life. “Hospice is not about dying,” states Jean Chubb, RN,MSN, director of Doylestown Hospital Hospice. “It’s about quality of life.”

A team of caring professionals
The hospice teamworks together to help patients exercise asmuch control as possible over their lives during their final months and attain a level of physical, mental, and spiritual preparation for death that is comforting to them. The team typically includes:

The first priority of the hospice team is to make the patient physically comfortable and as pain-free as possible. Team members tailor other hospice services to the desires of the patient, working together to enhance the lives of both the patient and the family.

The essence of caring
In the words of the wife of one hospice patient, “I knew I wanted to care for my husband at home [with the help of hospice] during his remaining time with us, but the day I brought him home from the hospital I just felt completely overwhelmed. Then members of the hospice team started to arrive. I thought to myself, ‘Hospice is here and they’re going to help us go down this very difficult path.’ To me, this is the very essence of what caring should be.”