National Hospice & Palliative Care Month
November is National Hospice and Palliative Care Month—a time to celebrate, reflect, and express gratitude. It’s a privilege to share time with our patients and their families—thank you for trusting us with your care. We are grateful to our dedicated nursing, social work, spiritual, and bereavement professionals who provide care and comfort with dignity and compassion; every member of our team is committed to fulfilling our Mission. A special thank you to ALL our Staff, volunteer Board of Directors, Volunteers, supporters, community partners, and physicians who work alongside us to provide the best care possible.
Hospice is not a place but is high-quality care that enables patients and families to focus on living as fully as possible despite a life-limiting illness. Palliative care brings this holistic model of care to people earlier in the course of a serious illness. “It’s important that people understand that choosing hospice care is not giving up—it’s the first step in taking control and determining the course of your end-of-life journey,” said Natalie Whitehurst, Executive Director, Hospice of the North County. “It is an honor when families welcome us into their homes and allow us to help their loved ones pass peacefully, with dignity and respect.”
For more than 40 years, hospice has helped provide interdisciplinary, supportive care to millions of people, allowing them to spend their final months wherever they call home and surrounded by their loved ones. Hospice teams craft plans of care that ensure pain management, therapies, and treatments all center on the patients’ and their loved ones’ goals and wishes. Hospice care also provides emotional support and advice to help family members become confident caregivers and adjust to the future with grief support for up to a year.
“At the heart of hospice is meeting patients and their loved ones where they are during difficult times when support is needed most,” said Ben Marcantonio, COO and Interim CEO of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO). “National Hospice and Palliative Care month recognizes the crucial role hospice and palliative care providers play in caring for their communities year-round.”
Hospice is more than traditional health care. Hospice of the North Country provides pain management, symptom control, psychosocial support, and spiritual care to patients and their families when a cure is not possible. Hospice care is a combination of the highest level of quality medical care with the emotional and spiritual support that families need most when facing the end of life.
The Hospice of the North Country team can provide care in a patient’s home, in hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted living facilities—wherever the patient calls home. Among its major responsibilities, hospice care includes the following:
§ managing the patient’s pain and symptoms
§ assisting the patient with the emotional, psychosocial, and spiritual aspects of dying
§ providing needed prescriptions, medical supplies, and equipment related to hospice diagnosis
§ educating and supports family on how to care for their loved one
§ making short-term inpatient care available when pain or symptoms become too difficult to treat at home, or the caregiver needs respite
§ providing bereavement care and counseling to surviving family and friends
§ offering volunteer assistance for patients and families
§ assisting families with accessing community resources
In 2019, 1.61 million Medicare beneficiaries received care from hospices in this country, reports NHPCO. When a patient is not eligible for hospice care, they may benefit from community-based palliative care, often offered by hospice providers. Palliative care is patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering. Palliative care throughout the continuum of illness also involves addressing physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs and facilitates patient autonomy through access to information and choice.
The term “hospice” (from the same linguistic root as “hospitality”) can be traced back to medieval times when it referred to a place of shelter and rest for weary or ill travelers on a long journey. The name was first applied to specialized care for dying patients by physician Dame Cicely Saunders, who began her work with the terminally ill in 1948 and eventually went on to create the first modern hospice—St. Christopher’s Hospice—in a residential suburb of London.
Saunders introduced the idea of specialized care for the dying to the United States during a 1963 visit with Yale University. Her lecture, given to medical students, nurses, social workers, and chaplains about the concept of holistic hospice care, included photos of terminally ill cancer patients and their families, showing the dramatic differences before and after the symptom control care.
For additional information about hospice and advance care planning, call Hospice of the North Country at 518.483.3200 (Malone office) or 518.561.8465 (Plattsburgh office). Or, you can visit hospicenc.org. The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organizations Caring Connections offers information and resources for professionals and consumers at caringinfo.org.