Last Updated on June 19, 2024 by Frank Davis
That depends on who you ask and what their definition of “dying” is. The word hospice comes from the Latin word ‘hospes’, which means ‘hospitality’. Hospice was originally a home for travelers, where they could find food and lodgings. It’s only in the last few hundred years that hospice has come to refer to a place where people can go at the end of life.
Hospices are designed around one simple idea: to make life as comfortable as possible for patients nearing death. Hospices provide medication, pain management, and end-of-life information to patients (and their families). They try to move patients through the stages of dying with as little distress as possible. Hospices also offer comfort and companionship for the patients and their families.
What they are not is a place where people can go to die. Hospice care does not include artificial nutrition or hydration, nor do they provide assisted suicide or euthanasia. Hospices are designed specifically with the goal of avoiding pain, discomfort, and fear at the end of life. They are not a place that you go to die, they are a place that you go to live.
Many people hear “hospice” and think that they are signing up to die. Hospice is not a place to die. It’s a place to be comfortable at the end of life, where patients are cared for in their own homes, with the comfort of family, medical care, and support. Many patients go to hospice at a much later stage in life than most people realize. Often, patients will enter hospice as a way to manage pain and symptoms, so they can continue living at home as long as possible.
It is important to distinguish between what hospice care and dying is, because many people are confused about what hospice can or should do for them at the end of life. There are also misconceptions about what hospice means, and how it works. Hospices do not replace doctors or other medical practitioners; they work with them to provide care at home, after patients have decided to stop fighting their illness.
When you hear “hospice”, think “hospitality” and “comfort”. It’s a place that will help your family and friends handle the end-of-life in a kind and caring way. It’s a place to help you live every day that you have left.
It’s not about where you’re going to die, but how you live up until then. It’s about love and companionship, not pain and fear. It’s time for hospice care to take its place as the new standard of medical decision making — one that focuses on quality of life, patient choice and control — at the end of life. If we’re going to call it “hospice”, then let’s make sure that we’re calling it for what it is.
