Getting to the Heart of the Matter
AdventHealth HospiceCare is here to lend a helping hand, medical care and a shoulder when facing a life-limiting illness. We know that this is one of the hardest transitions a patient and a family can face, and the HospiceCare Team exists to help carry you through this time. Providing warm, welcoming, personalized care in the home-like atmosphere of one of AdventHealth HospiceCare’s in-patient facilities, a local nursing home, assisted living facility or while receiving in-home care is the heart of the matter.
What is Hospice Care?
The idea of hospice stems from medieval times when it referred to a place of lodging for weary travelers. It came to mean end-of-life care when physician Dame Cicely Saunders worked with terminally ill patients beginning in 1948, leading her to open St. Christopher’s Hospice in a London suburb in 1967. Florence Wald, then Dean of the Yale University School of Nursing, invited Dame Saunders to present the hospice theory to medical students, nurses, social workers, and chaplains in the United States in 1963.
In 1974, Wald helped found Connecticut Hospice in Branford, Connecticut. Hospice care began with the idea that terminally ill patients benefit from care in the home and in home-like atmospheres, rather than in institutional settings, giving patients both a sense of dignity and a voice to affect their own destinies.
Today, AdventHealth HospiceCare is here to provide individualized, personal care at your home, a local facility or at one of our home-like inpatient centers — Stuart F. Meyer Hospice House, HospiceCare at AdventHealth Daytona Beach and HospiceCare at AdventHealth Fish Memorial.
When you need us, the mission of AdventHealth HospiceCare is to meet the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of terminally ill patients and those who love them.
Definitions
Hospice care is focused on caring, not curing, and provides patients access to expert medical care, pain management and emotional and spiritual support. Care is tailored to the desires of patients and their loved ones. At its heart is the belief that every person has a right to a dignified and pain-free death, while our families receive the support necessary to enable the process.