SERIOUS ILLNESS: Palliative Care | Hospice Care | POLST Form | Coping With Illness | Informed Decisions | Peace & Grace
Care that Values Our Dignity & Supports Our
Whole Being & Our Family in the Final Months of Life
We humans value our independence and celebrate our strength in the face of difficulty. Even as we soldier on we cannot escape the arc of our humanity. Birth, our first breath, is our entry to all of Life. Death, our last breath, is our parting into the unknown. At the point when curative treatments for our disease or condition are no longer effective and our caring professionals believe that we have less than six months to live, it is time to embrace hospice care.
Hospice care continues all the supportive benefits of whole-person palliative care and adds the dimension of helping us and our loved ones plan as peaceful a dying experience as our circumstances permit. Hospice care is a final blessing. It can help us go in peace, surrounded and supported by loved ones and caregivers.
Hospice services can arrange for the care of your body after death that you have specified. Hospice services can support your grieving loved ones after your death.
The biggest frustration of Hospice Care services have is that individuals and families often do not interact with them until the last days of life. There is so much more that they can do in the months and weeks before that time.
Informative Articles on Hospice Care
How Do I Initiate a Hospice Talk? – Crossroads University
Understanding Your Loved One’s Hospice Team — Crossroads University
Hospice Myths & Facts – Hospice & Palliative Care Association
Choosing a Hospice – 16 Questions to Ask – American Hospice Foundation
Whole Family Support
“How people die remains in the memory of those who live on.”
Dame Cicely Saunders (1918-2009), Founder of St, Christopher’s Hospice, London, United Kingdom
Hospice care in not just for the person who is dying. It supports the family in making difficult decisions,acting as an intermediary between patient, family and professionals,providing services to keep pain medications in balance, and in providing grief support after the loved one has died.
Watch Palliative Care & Hospice Care in Action
End Game – Netflix documentary on Netflix
Facing an inevitable outcome, terminally ill patients meet extraordinary medical practitioners seeking to change our approach to life and death.
View Trailer on Netflix.com
A Beautiful Death: Paul’s Choice
From the National Palliative Care & Hospice Care – Consumer Reports Health Comfort during a serious illness or the final months of life.
Essential Conversations
How to Have Everyday Conversations About Death and Dying
by Karen M. Wyatt, M.D.
Read the Huffington Post Article
Advice for When a Terminally Ill Patient is Praying for a Miracle
Rachel Naomi Remen, MD – The New School at Commonweal
Listen to a recording: Stories and Poems at the End of Life
Listen to other recordings in the End of Life Conversation Series
Spirituality at the End of Life
Hope & Grace, Spiritual Experiences in Severe Distress, Illness & Dying
by Monika Renz
The author shows how care providers can support patients in their suffering and how they can recognize patients’ spiritual experiences. Explaining different types of experiences of transcendence such as seeing angels or feelings of otherness and presence, this book will be of valuable use to professionals working in palliative and spiritual care, such as spiritual caregivers, therapists, nurses, and physicians. The book entails a new approach to spiritual care which opens a space of hope wherein grace may happen even amid pain, suffering, illness and dying.
Find this book at your local library or order it online
See Also:
Cultural Resources for End of Life Care:
Ethnicity – Military Service – Gender Identity – Homelessness – Religious Tradition
and
The Journey Home A Time for Hospice Care the Special Needs of Veterans …and more.
Hospice Organizations
HealthCare Chaplaincy Network
a national nonprofit health care organization that provides professional-grade spiritual care-related services and resources ‒ regardless of religion or beliefs ‒ in hospitals, other health care settings, and online.
Hospice and Palliative Care Federation of Massachusetts
Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition
Exemplary Hospice Centers
St. Christopher’s Hospice, London, United Kingdom
This remarkable Hospice service is considered to be the place where palliative care and hospice care originated through the vision of end of life care conceived by Dame Cicely Saunders (1918-2005).
Zen Hospice Project, San Francisco, California
Shanti Project, San Francisco, California
Providence TrinityCare Hospice