Hospices focus on caring, not curing and, in some cases, care is provided in the patient?s home. In Bermuda, Agape House serves as the only freestanding hospice centre.

Services are available to patients of any age, religion, race, or terminal illness. Hospice care is covered under most private insurance plans, as well as the government health plan.

Cheif Executive Officer of the Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB), Joan Dillas Wright, said the BHB ?fully supports Agape House as it raises awareness of hospice and palliative care in Bermuda?.

And she urged the community to use the month tolearn more about Agape House. Palliative care extends the principles of hospice care to a broader population that could benefit from receiving this type of care earlier in their illness or disease process.

No specific therapy is excluded from consideration. An individual?s needs must be continually assessed and treatment options should be explored and evaluated in the context of the individual?s values and symptoms. Palliative care, ideally, would segue into hospice care as the illness progresses.

Typically, a family member serves as the primary caregiver and, when appropriate, helps make decisions for the terminally ill individual. Members of the hospice staff will help assess the patient.

The hospice team develops a care plan that meets each patient?s individual needs for pain management and symptom control. The team usually consists of the patient? s personal physician, hospice physician, nurses, home health aides, social workers, clergy or other counselors, volunteers and speech, physical, and occupational therapists, if needed.

Considered to be the model for quality, compassionate care for people facing a life-limiting illness or injury, hospice and palliative care involves a team-oriented approach to expert medical care, pain management, and emotional and spiritual support expressly tailored to the patient?s needs and wishes. Support is provided to the patient? s loved ones as well.

Among its major responsibilities, the interdisciplinary hospice team manages the patient?s pain and symptoms, assists the patient with the emotional, psychosocial and spiritual aspects of dying, provides needed drugs, medical supplies, and equipment.

The hospice team also coaches the family on how to care for the patient, delivers special services like speech and physical therapy when needed, offers inpatient care when pain or symptoms become too difficult to manage at home or the caregiver needs respite time, and provides bereavement care and counseling to surviving family and friends.

Palliative care enhances comfort and improves the quality of an individual?s life during the last phase of life.

Such care depends upon an agreement between the individual, the physicians, the primary caregiver and the hospice team. The expected outcome is relief from distressing symptoms, the easing of pain, and/or enhancing the quality of life.

@EDITRULE:

The Bermuda Hospitals Board will be holding the following events to mark Hospice month.

November 7, 2 p.m., ?Walk to Remember?, a pledge walk benefiting Agape House. The walk starts at the Visitors Centre in Botanical Gardens. It is organized by Friends of Hospice, a non-profit organization that is the fundraising arm of Agape House.

November 18, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Agape Open House for the general public, healthcare professionals and relatives of patients

November 26, 6 p.m., Tree of Lights at the steps of City Hall