What is a hospice?
Traditionally, hospices have been thought of as places where people go to die. Whilst caring for people at the end of their life is certainly part of hospice work, we also offer a broad range of other services for those with palliative care needs.
What is 'palliative care'?
The term 'palliative care' is not understood very well, and is often thought of as care toward the end stages of someone's illness. This is not the case. We offer palliative care when an illness is no longer curable by active treatment, but there are still a number of ways in which a patient and their families can maintain a quality of life over the full duration of illness. Preventing or controlling symptoms such as pain and sickness are examples of this.
As people may be fearful of how any life-limiting illness might affect them, some aspects of their illness can be difficult to discuss. However, the aim of any palliative care is to help the patient, their family and carers to cope with their illness in a less distressing way.
By promoting both physical and psychological well-being, our palliative care approach focuses on -
- Quality of life
- Taking account of a person's past life and present condition
- Caring for the person with the life-threatening illness and those who matter to them
- Respect for patient choice, including their wishes over place of care and treatment options
- Open and sensitive communication with them and their families