Hospice Care
Hospice Care – Every day, hospices across the country bring comfort to their communities, allowing families and friends to focus on being together.
This week – Hospice Care Week – celebrates the staff and volunteers who work to make their hospice a place of care, compassion, and life.
But what is a hospice and what does it do…?
What is a hospice…?
A hospice is a place that supports people with life-limiting illnesses (alongside supporting their family, friends, and carers).
Their support is for as long as is needed, can be adapted or paused as required, and accessed from home, a care home, as a hospice resident, or during day visits.
While each hospice varies, a typical team will include doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants, social workers, therapists, counsellors, chaplains, and trained volunteers.
And their services are free. A hospice is paid for through public donations and government funding.
What does a hospice do…?
A hospice provides care from the diagnosis of an incurable illness to the end of life.
Holistic in its approach, a hospice caters to the person’s physical, medical, social, emotional, practical, psychological, and spiritual needs. And can often offer guidance on such things as coping financially, remaining independent, and bereavement.
Alongside medical and nursing care (including managing pain and other symptoms), the hospice might also provide:
- Respite care – a little time for the family to recuperate;
- Physiotherapy;
- Occupational therapy;
- Complimentary therapies, such as massages;
- Events and activities.
To find out about the services your local hospice offers, please do give them a call.
How do you find your local hospice?
Your GP surgery will have the contact details.
Or, alternatively, you may pop online and search via HospiceUK.
How can you support your local hospice?
To supplement their government funding and to ensure they can maintain their services, hospices collect public donations. They run events and often own a shop or two, wherein you’ll find all manner of bargains. You might even find things you didn’t even know you needed, such as these two cute little bathroom penguins…
