What is hospice or palliative care?
"You matter because you are you and you matter until the last moment of your life. We will do all we can, not only to help you die peacefully but to live until you die."
Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern UK hospice movement
The hospice movement has earned admiration, endorsement and devoted support for its work with people who face the end of life - and with those who love them. Hospices have enriched the lives of well over 250,000 people in the last year alone. There are 220 adult hospices in the UK. (Source: Help The Hospices Directory 2006)
By controlling pain and other symptoms, hospice care, also known as palliative care, enables patients to achieve the best possible quality of life. Nearly half of all people admitted to a hospice return home again and the average length of stay is just 13 days. (Source: Hospice Information, 2007)
Hospice care:
- provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms
- affirms life and regards dying as a normal process
- intends neither to hasten or postpone death
- integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care
- offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death
- offers a support system to help the family cope during the patient's illness and in their own bereavement
- uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling
- will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of an illness
- is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications Source: (World Health Organisation, 2002)
A common misunderstanding is that hospice care is available only to people with cancer. In fact hospices also care for patients in the end stages of other incurable illnesses such as neurological conditions including Motor Neurone Disease and Multi-System Atrophy, HIV and AIDS, and far-advanced organ failures.
Hospice care is free of charge to all patients and their families.