Compassionate End-of-Life Care with Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel

MP3 Download We all hope for dying well and living fully until we do. The truth is that we don’t have a choice about whether or not we’re going to die, but sometimes we have a choice about whether our dying is going to be easier or harder. The hospice movement has been integral in helping patients and their families move through this most intense transition of dying. Not only does it offer support to the patient, it supports the entire family as well. Beyond physical care and pain management, hospice’s mandate is to offer spiritual as well as bereavement care. Surprisingly, hospice care is now a $14 billion business and many for-profit care operations are forming. This dialogue offers some practical suggestions for choosing hospice care. Smith and Himmel describe the philosophy of hospice care as, “Helping people to live fully as long as they can. It is about treating people, not treating disease, and the focus is on the whole family because, especially, a dying patient is not floating