Hospice Nursing: Quality of Life in Death

In the 1950’s, a physician named Cicely Saunders changed the way we think about the terminally ill. Speaking from her first-hand patient care experiences, she exposed the inadequacies of a hospice setting as a form of end-of-life care. She held a strong belief that physicians, rather than the currently used volunteers and nuns, should be the ones to treat hospice patients.  She was also instrumental in championing the notion that opioids should be used for pain management in a hospice setting, using such drugs to improve the quality of life for these patients.  Currently, an estimated one-third of Americans who are terminally ill are in hospice – a figure that is growing each year.

Hospice has been credited with saving Medicare money. Approximately one-third of Medicare costs are spent on end-of-life services. Hospice services significantly reduce those costs by eliminating needless, often costly treatments, and limiting the repetitive misuse of emergency room visits.  In addition, a hospice program offers a more holistic approach to care, offering an array of services, including pain management, grief counseling, patient and family services; these services are not traditionally offered at primary care offices or emergency department visits.

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