Everyone asks this question at some time or another: hospice care which no one seemed to know anything about 20 years ago is now on the minds of anyone with a grave illness — or a terminally ill friend or relative.
But as with any other service, there are hospices to seek out and others to avoid. How to choose?
For help, I consulted the research of Angela Morrow, a hospice nurse who writes on the subject for About.com (http://dying.about.com/od/hospicecare/u/hospice_UP.htm ) . Her first piece of advice was surpising but very sensible:
Find out where the hospice staff is located.
That’s right. Most terminally ill patients will never see the inside of a hospice. They will be treated at home, which makes sense on all counts: more comfortable, more familiar, and less costly.
That means you want hospices nurses and aides to live and work close by, in case you or your sick relatives need anything. “Make sure,” says Morrow, “that the on-call nurse lives in your area.”
Also: find out how often a home health aide will be making visits to your relative: ideally this should be 2-3 days a week. And make sure the hospice is also staffed with volunteers.
Why volunteers? Because volunteers often come from a pool of relatives and friends of those who have benefited from hospice care. They are, in other words, the last legacy of a grateful patients. If a hospice has a lot of volunteers at its disposal, it’s often the result of the excellent care it has given to the loved ones of those volunteers. A good sign, in other words.
I’d be very interested in your experiences with hospice care. Good points? Bad points? Just click on the green envelope and tell me your stories. Confidentiality is assured. I won’t use your real names. Just your real experiences.
