Upper Galilee Hospice - an Israeli hospice in the northern Galilee panhandle.
Deciding to use the care of a hospice is a choice that you make to enhance the life of a dying person. As a person with a terminal disease, the choice to die at home in the comfort a place that is familiar offers and among the support of your relatives and friends, as well as caring professionals, close by, makes a huge difference. Hospice care emphasizes the patient's comfort as well as counseling to provide physical, social, and spiritual support to a person with a terminal disease and that person's family and friends. All hospice care is under professional medical supervision with most of the care provided within the patient's home.
The differences between hospice care and traditional care begin in that traditional care emphasizes using medical interventions, hospitalizations, and drugs to help cure or at least control the disease. This approach is appropriate, if there is a possible cure. It may be the appropriate choice as well when there is no cure, but it is up to the preferences of the people involved.
The hospice environment provides a relief from pain. Physical pain that arises from a terminal illness can be debilitating, frightening, and dehumanizing. People who are involved in this type of organization's work have the skills and resources that allow people to live as close to pain free, comfortable, and a relatively full life as they possibly can.
As earlier mentioned, hospice service provides support in addition to providing for the physical comfort of the dying person. It provides social and spiritual support for both the patient and the patient's family. This support can take the form of time-off for the primary caregiver, personal care, nutritional counseling, pastoral counseling, grief counseling, as well as help with legal and funeral arrangements.
Most of the patients at hospices have cancer although others can suffer from AIDS, Lou Gehrig's disease, heart or lung disease, and other fatal conditions. It does not matter what disease a person may have, the role of the hospice is alway the same - to provide professional medical care, to make pain and other symptoms managable, as well as to meet the social, emotional, and spiritual needs of ever patient and their family.
This type of organization existis in the belief and hope that, through appropriate care, patients and their families might be able to attain a degree of mental and spiritual preparation for death that is meaningful and satisfactory to them. The type of care is sensitive, dignified, and cost - effective for health care. It even has been proven that this type of care is less costly than traditional health care, with higher levels of satisfaction from both the patients and the families.