National Hospice and Palliative Care Month
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. November is National Hospice and Palliative Care Month and hospice and palliative care programs across the country are reaching out to help people understand all that hospice and palliative care offer.
“It is essential that people understand that hospice and palliative care is not giving up, it is not the abandonment of care, it is not reserved for the imminently dying,” said Edo Banach, president and CEO of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. “Hospice is a successful model of person-centered care that brings hope, dignity and compassion when they are most needed. This is one reason that the national My Hospice Campaign was launched this year.
Every year, nearly 1.5 million Medicare beneficiaries receive care from hospices in this country, reports NHPCO. Hospice and palliative care programs provide pain management, symptom control, psychosocial support, and spiritual care to patients and their family caregivers when a cure is not possible.
“We are proud of our efforts to fulfill our mission of providing end-of-life care to those who are in need; however, we know there are many more people who could benefit from our care—they are simply just not aware of what we can do to help,” said Cathlyn Lamitie, Director of Development/Communications, Hospice of the North Country. “And that is our goal—to reach more of our neighbors, to ensure they die with dignity, respect and peace in the setting of their choosing and with our compassionate staff providing for their physical, spiritual and psycho-social needs.”
The Hospice of the North Country team can provide care in a patient’s home, in hospitals, and nursing homes—wherever the patient calls home. Among its major responsibilities, hospice care includes the following:
§ managing the patient’s pain and symptoms
§ assists the patient with the emotional, psychosocial and spiritual aspects of dying
§ provides needed prescriptions, medical supplies, and equipment related to hospice diagnosis
§ educate and supports family on how to care for their loved one
§ delivers special services like speech and physical therapy when needed
§ makes short-term inpatient care available when pain or symptoms become too difficult to treat at home, or the caregiver needs respite
§ provides bereavement care and counseling to surviving family and friends
§ offer volunteer assistance for patients and families
§ assists families with accessing community resources
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). The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organizations Caring Connections offers information and resources for professionals and consumers at caringinfo.org.
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.
More information about hospice, palliative care, and advance care planning is available hospicenc.org or from NHPCO’s CaringInfo.org.
