What is Hospice and Palliative Care?
Hospice
Hospice is a philosophy of care that accepts death as a natural part of life, seeking neither to hasten nor prolong the dying process.Caring that strives to help patients truly "live until they die" – without the fear of dying in pain, dying alone or losing control.
Hospice is a comprehensive, medically directed, team-oriented program of care that seeks to treat and comfort terminally ill patients and their families at home or in a home-like setting, establishing pain management and symptom control as clinical goals, and understanding that psychological and spiritual pain are significant as physical pain.
Palliative Care
Palliative care means patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering. Palliative care throughout the continuum of illness involves addressing physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs and facilitating patient autonomy, access to information, and choice.
The measure of life is not its length, but its fullness. Palliative care means making every day the best it can be. In Chinese, the symbol for palliative care stands for "nurturing living." The emphasis is adding life to days rather than days to life.
Dignity in human life includes the balance of the human physical, emotional and spiritual capacities. Palliative care attempts to create a balance in these areas. Palliative care expands traditional disease-model medical treatments to includes the goals of enhancing quality of life for a patient and family.
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