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A Hospice House in Missouri. Hospice care is a type of health care that focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill patient's pain and symptoms and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life. Hospice care prioritizes comfort and quality of life by reducing pain and suffering.
The goal of hospice agencies in the United States is to provide comfort to the patient and heighten quality of life. [15] How comfort is defined is up to the patient or, if the patient is incapacitated, the patient's family.
Hospice care services and palliative care programs share similar goals of mitigating unpleasant symptoms, controlling pain, optimizing comfort, and addressing psychological distress. Hospice care focuses on comfort and psychological support and curative therapies are not pursued. [16]
A person accepts comfort care, known as palliative care, instead of curative care for the illness. A person signs a statement choosing hospice care instead of other Medicare-covered treatments for ...
Palliative care got its start as hospice care delivered largely by caregivers at religious institutions. The first formal hospice was founded in 1948 by the British physician Dame Cicely Saunders in order to care for patients with terminal illnesses. [2] She defined key physical, emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions of distress in her work.
Hospices exist to provide comfort to people who doctors determine are at the end of their lives, with six months or less to live. The paramount objective, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, a trade association, is to make patients comfortable, with a focus “on enhancing the quality of remaining life.”