The Hospice Movement

Key Idea: Death is not the end of life just a stage in its process. Christians should not be afraid of death but have a duty to care for those who are dying.

A hospice is a place where people who have a terminal (fatal) illness can find respite care during their illness and then return home. If they can't go home, they have to go to a nursing home. They may well be under the care of the Hospice for a long time but most of that care will be in their own home via MacMillan Nurses (who are usually employed by the hospice) or in daycare. Some are places where people will go for the final stages of the illness. The hospice movement specialises in pain control and the aim of the hospice movement is to give people with painful and terminal diseases the best possible quality of life.

"Hospices are places where people come to live, not to die" [Dr.H. Mossop - A Hospice doctor]

The modern hospice movement began in the 1960s and many have a Christian foundation. Although many of the doctors and nurses who work at the hospices may be Christian the patients can be of any faith or of none. The staff not only look after the patients, they help them prepare for their deaths and also help the relatives prepare for the loss of their loved ones. The atmosphere at a hospice will be a loving and caring one, where the patients and the relatives are encouraged to talk about death and dying. Hospices are concerned not only with the physical heath of their patients but also with their emotional, psychological and spiritual health. The purpose of Christian care is:

"..to glorify God by affirming the sanctity and dignity of life - that even the time of death can be filled with a living hope, based on trust in Jesus Christ as Lord of life and death"

Mission statement of Southwest Christian Hospice - Atlanta Georgia USA

St. Christopher's Hospice, Oxford

Dame Cicely Saunders founded the first modern hospice in London in 1967. It was founded on the principles of caring for the sick, researching into pain control, and teaching nurses and doctors how to cope with terminal disease. It also was one of the first hospitals to include the ideas of spiritual treatment as well as medical.

"We have to concern ourselves with the quality of life as well as its length"

Dame Cicely Saunders - Helen House

Helen House was set up in Oxford by a group of nuns as the world's first hospice for children. It is especially sad to see children with terminal diseases.We expect old people to be ill, and we expect to die when we are old; but to see children dying is very distressing. Below is a poem written by a hospice patient:

[Note: this poem is a personal reflection from a patient, in reality it is unlikely that a surgeon will appear in a hospice and never with a retinue of students]

Death is natural, a hospice gives us a chance to prepare for the inevitability of death in a mostly pain free and controlled environment. It combines the medical with the spiritual, the human with the divine. Hospices are places where we can truly prepare to meet our maker