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Hospice

Coping with a terminal illness affects everyone: patient, family and friends. St. Joseph's Hospice team helps patients with terminal illness spend their last days with comfort, dignity and quality— at home or in a home-like setting with their loved ones.

Hospice offers palliative comfort care rather than curative treatment. Under a physician's direction, hospice manages both pain and symptoms to enable the patient to live as fully as comfortably as possible.

• Hospice Registered Nurses provide comfort and pain management,
  and communicates regularly with the primary care physician.
• Hospice Social Workers counsel and assist patients and their families
  with the emotional, social and financial stresses that surface with
  terminal illness.
• Certified Nursing Assistants help patients with activities involved in
  daily living, such as bathing, grooming, dressing and hair care.
• Hospice Chaplains provide spiritual counseling to patients and their
  families, as requested.
• Trained Volunteers offer a variety of support services to patients and
  families, providing companionship and assistance to allow caregivers
  to take a break, without worry.
• Bereavement Staff offer support to the family after the patient's death,
  helping the bereaved move through a health grief process and a
  renewed sense of meaning and purpose in their lives.

Home Hospice Volunteers— These men and women of all ages and backgrounds give of themselves to help others. These special people find a few hours each week to give to others and show they care. The majority of volunteers assist the patient and family by offering services such as respite care, help with errands, or companionship to both the patient and the family. All volunteers have completed an extensive training program. Some families prefer to have a regularly scheduled time each week for a volunteer to provide respite or companionship. Others prefer to contact the volunteer or have the volunteer contact them weekly and set up a time when services are needed. Still others will use a volunteer intermittently on an as-needed basis.
View volunteer brochure.