Articles

Many Myths Surround Hospice Care

Hospice is where you go when you are desperate and in the very last days of life.
This unfortunate myth keeps people from accessing hospice services that could make an invaluable contribution to their quality of life. Patients can receive care for weeks or months depending on the course their disease takes. The sooner patients and families enter the program, the greater benefit they receive from the hospice inter-disciplinary team of doctors, nurses, social workers, home health aides, clergy and volunteers. Usually, little intervention is necessary in the beginning, but being in the program early on allows everyone to become acquainted and a comprehensive plan of care put into place.

As the disease progresses, visits increase as needed.
Pain and symptoms are carefully managed, spiritual and emotional support provided, and volunteer and home health aide services assigned. On-call staff are available to address unexpected concerns twenty four hours every day. The patient and family receive the guidance and services they need to approach the end of life peacefully.

Hospice is only for old people with cancer.
At Hospice of Southeastern Connecticut, our youngest patient was one day old and our oldest 100 years old. We care for patients with any life-limiting diagnosis including: congestive heart failure, kidney failure, multiple sclerosis, AIDS as well as cancer. To respond to our growing pediatric census, we created our KidsCare Program to address the special needs of children requiring hospice care.

When a patient dies, hospice services cease.
Grief begins at the time a patient and family learn of a terminal illness. For the family, that process continues long after their loved one has died. Grief is normal but often requires support to heal successfully. Family members have access to bereavement services for 13 months following a death. Services include: volunteer visits, phone calls, periodic mailings, and a memorial service. Hospice of Southeastern Connecticut offers bereavement support groups to our hospice families as well as to the community.

Hospice is an institution where you have to go and stay.
Hospice of Southeastern Connecticut cares for patients in their home. Most people want the comfort of familiar surroundings, family and friends as they approach the end of life. Close to 80 percent of the patients in our care are able to die at home according to their own wishes. When a patient can not be cared for at home, we work with various facilities in the area to make sure that hospice care continues.

Hospice is cloaked in doom and gloom; it is depressing.
Hospice is about hope, not for a long life but for a meaningful life. The loss we experience when someone dies is sad. But sadness has a different quality than depression. When patients die with the care of hospice they retain control over how they wish to spend their remaining days. They are comfortable, alert, able to say their good-byes and put their affairs in order. To die alone, frightened, or in pain is depressing. To die without pain, quietly and at peace, surrounded by family and friends, is sad.