Care at the end of life is something that not a lot of people are comfortable talking about, mainly because death and dying are complicated and difficult topics. That unfortunately leads to a lot of misunderstandings about what hospice care is and how it can help your elderly family member during this stage of her life. It’s possible that your senior could benefit greatly from getting this type of care earlier.

Many People Think Hospice Is a Last Resort

Because hospice care tends to be something that only gets discussed at the end of someone’s life, many people think of it as a last resort. But that’s not actually true about this type of care. Hospice services focus on treating the patient rather than treating the disease, like curative therapies tend to do. Hospice care can open up new forms of care for your senior.

Or That Hospice Focuses on Dying

A corollary belief is that hospice treatments are centered on death and the process of dying. While there is a segment of hospice that does assist with these thorny subjects, this type of care is not devoted only to death. Celebrating your senior’s life is a much bigger part of this type of care.

Hospice Care Is About Enhancing Quality of Life

The prevailing concept in hospice care is to focus on your senior’s life and on maintaining her quality of life as well as possible. Curative therapies often aren’t able to keep quality of life high on the priority list because of the nature of some of those treatments. Hospice has the leeway to make sure that whatever your senior needs in order to be as comfortable as possible becomes a priority.

Accessing Hospice Sooner Has Huge Benefits

Your senior is able to maintain her dignity in a familiar environment, if she chooses. You and she also know that hospice care providers will respect your senior’s wishes for this stage of her life. There may be other benefits that matter more to your senior, like having care available day and night if she needs that. All of this allows your senior and her family to make the most of the time that she has left.

Getting to know how hospice care can work for your senior can help you and she to access all of the different types of care that she needs.

If you or your aging loved one could benefit from Hospice Care in St. Matthews SC, contact the caring staff at Grove Park Hospice, (803) 536-6644.