Let Hope Hospice Help You Understand Palliative Care

Hospice and palliative care programs are often misunderstood, seen as “giving up,” or even feared by many. However, hospice and palliative care is intended to provide pain management, symptom control, psychosocial support, and spiritual care to patients and their families when a cure is not possible or practical. In hospice, nurses, social workers, chaplains, physicians, and certified nursing assistants aim to meet people where they are in the end-of-life, with a focus on living to the fullest despite a life-limiting illness, and bringing peace to individuals in the final months of life.

At Hope Hospice, we hear so frequently, “I wish I had called hospice sooner,” and “What a relief it was to have your help.”

Hope Hospice was founded as a nonprofit hospice, in 1984, by a dedicated group of community members, and many are still involved today. Hope Hospice has stayed true to their vision ever since. Our steering committee and founding board were led by Bobbi Carmichael, whose vision was for our community to have the gift of hospice that other areas of the nation had then recently begun to have. In her words, “I dreamed that Hope Hospice would be everything to everyone that they needed, exactly when they needed it.” We have continued to work toward that goal for forty years, governed by community members, and making decisions that have the best interests of our patients and families in mind, rather than shareholders.

Hope Hospice not only provides the highest quality of comfort and supportive care at end-of-life through its hospice services, for both patients and their families, we also offer a palliative care program that fills the gap in healthcare between curative and hospice stages, providing pain and symptom management earlier in the course of a serious illness while still receiving treatments. Much more than expert medical care, both hospice and palliative care provide mental and emotional support as well as resources and assistance for needed equipment and living situations. We work with patients, families, and their healthcare providers to create a plan of care tailored to each person’s unique needs. What matters most to our patients and families, matters most to us.

Hope Hospice’s Hampel-Wuest Grief & Hope Center has a team of licensed professional counselors who are experienced in working with grieving adults, children and families through individual counseling, family counseling, play therapy, support groups and our award-winning Camp HavenHeart.

What’s more is that we don’t turn anyone who qualifies for hospice or palliative service away, regardless of their ability to pay. We believe that no one should die alone and that all who need end-of-life care should receive it. Our grief support is offered to anyone in the community who needs it…not just to those families whose loved ones were in Hope’s service. Thanks to generous support from our community, we provide counseling and Camp HavenHeart for little to no cost, ensuring that just like Bobbi dreamed, we could be everything to everyone, when they needed it… when it matters most.