"I am standing on the seashore. A ship spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean. I stand watching her until she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says, 'she is gone.' Gone where? The loss of sight is in me, not in her. Just at the moment when someone says 'she is gone,' there are others who are watching her coming. Other voices take up the glad shout, 'Here she comes,' and that is dying."
~ Henry Scott Holland

The hospice movement is both ancient and modern. Beginning as a form of comfort for travelers, hospice has been adapted as a philosophy of care, to ease the journey from life to death. Our modern term "hospice" comes from the Latin "hospes," meaning both host and guest, and symbolizing the mutual caring of people for one another.

Hospice is a philosophy of caring that assists a person nearing the end of life. Its goal is to improve the quality of life that remains by focusing on providing care for the patient and the family rather than attempting to cure the disease. The modern hospice may not be a place or a building ~ instead, it's a concept designed to prolong meaningful living, not physiological dying. Therefore, no active, curative therapies are undertaken. In short, the goal of all hospice care is palliation, or making the patient as comfortable as possible - not dulled by social isolation, drugs, or heroic life saving efforts.

In the 1950s, Cicely Saunders (nurse, social worker, and medical doctor in London) started what we now know as the Hospice movement. She envisioned a center that would be an ecumenical religious and medical foundation, combining the best care for dying patients with opportunities for teaching and research in the fields of medicine, nursing, and allied professions. She soon developed the technique of pain control and total care for dying patients - the cornerstone of hospices all over the world.

In 1967 Dame Saunders opened St. Christopher's Hospice in London. Her reseach found two special needs of the dying that were not being met by conventional treatment: pain control and concern for the patient as a whole human being. Hospice was conceived to address these special needs and thus the concept of 'Palliative Care' for the dying was born.

Making the decision to place a loved one in a long term care facility can be very traumatic. Hospice can help both the patient and the family through this transition. The hospice team becomes an extended family, providing extra visits to the patient and acting as a liaison between the nursing home, or attending physician and the family.

Hospice is cost effective and is a major factor in reducing the cost of terminal care. About 28 percent of Medicare expenditures go toward care delivered in the last year of life, and almost 50 percent of those costs are expended in the last two months of life. The majority of these costs are associated with hospitalizations and high-tech interventions.

By following Dame Saunders' vision, hospice makes it possible to help people leave this life with peace and comfort, surrounded by people who care.