Quotes & Sayings About Hospice Care

A paradigm shift of viewing palliative care or hospice as a gift instead of seeing it as giving up has the potential to change the way we experience advanced age. — Lisa J. Shultz

Nowhere in Scripture do I read where we are to discuss hospice care with seniors so they're willing to get out of the way and let younger folks live more expediently. — Jonathan Falwell

From routine hospital visits and prescription drugs, to emergencies and hospice care, Medicare covers the full range of health services that our nation's seniors rely on every single day. — Ann McLane Kuster

I've written and passed laws to give Medicare beneficiaries access to life saving cancer drugs and to ensure that seniors don't have to give up the prospect of a cure when they go into hospice care. — Ron Wyden

1. Define and articulate the role and functions of social work in end-of-life care in a consistent manner across all settings. 2. Address negative public and professional perceptions of social work internally and externally. 3. Identify and articulate specific and unique contributions of the social work profession in end-of-life care. 4. Facilitate and promote end-of-life social work research that demonstrates the utility and efficiency of social work in hospice. 5. Facilitate collaborative advocacy at the macro level to ensure access to quality interdisciplinary end-of-life care for all people. 6. Actively challenge shortsighted cost-saving initiatives that minimize the psychosocial and spiritual components of care for patients and families. 7. Develop standards for effective models of practice in end-of-life care. — Joan N. Berzoff

Hospice means end-of-life care. The admission ticket is a diagnosis from a doctor that you have six months or less to live. — Eleanor Clift

The author "nails it" in terms of how to deal with a parent's dementia. Rather than browbeating the subject, the author "plays along" and tries to enter the subject's own dementia-challenged "reality." The book contains excellent coping strategies and methodology for dealing with someone suffering with and enduring the pain of dementia or Alzheimer's. It does so with sensitivity, candor and laugh-provoking humor. — Joel Kriofske

Two-thirds of the terminal cancer patients in the Coping with Cancer study reported having had no discussion with their doctors about their goals for end-of-life care, despite being, on average, just four months from death. But the third who did have discussions were far less likely to undergo cardiopulmonary resuscitation or be put on a ventilator or end up in an intensive care unit. Most of them enrolled in hospice. They suffered less, were physically more capable, and were better able, for a longer period, to interact with others. In addition, six months after these patients died, their family members were markedly less likely to experience persistent major depression. In other words, people who had substantive discussions with their doctor about their end-of-life preferences were far more likely to die at peace and in control of their situation and to spare their family anguish. — Atul Gawande

Not the difference between treating and doing nothing, she explained. The difference was in the priorities. In ordinary medicine, the goal is to extend life. We'll sacrifice the quality of your existence now - by performing surgery, providing chemotherapy, putting you in intensive care - for the chance of gaining time later. Hospice deploys nurses, doctors, chaplains, and social workers to help people with a fatal illness have the fullest possible lives right now - — Atul Gawande

Where there were once several competing approaches to medicine, there is now only one that matters to most hospitals, insurers, and the vast majority of the public. One that has been shaped to a great degree by the successful development of potent cures that followed the discovery of sulfa drugs. Aspiring caregivers today are chosen as much (or more) for their scientific abilities, their talent for mastering these manifold technological and pharmaceutical advances as for their interpersonal skills. A century ago most physicians were careful, conservative observers who provided comfort to patients and their families. Today they act: They prescribe, they treat, they cure. They routinely perform what were once considered miracles. The result, in the view of some, has been a shift in the profession from caregiver to technician. The powerful new drugs changed how care was given as well as who gave it. — Thomas Hager

Such was the case with dead bodies. Every time you opened the box you could find anything from a ninety-five-year-old woman who died peacefully under home hospice care to a thirty-year-old man they found in a dumpster behind a Home Depot after eight days of putrefaction. Each person was a new adventure. — Caitlin Doughty

What life she had left could be measured in hours. Small recompense though they were, they belonged to me now. I had only to claim them. — Kim Van Alkemade

When I reflect on the stories of death supported by hospice care and contrast it with our story depicting an absence of support, I find myself dealing with envy and anger. I have channeled those emotions into this book with the hope that hearing our story might give someone else a chance to create a better ending to the life of a loved one. — Lisa J. Shultz