Services
When someone we love is seriously ill, we all want the best care possible. For most people that includes effective treatments to enable them to live longer, along with skillful attention to comfort, to enable them to live well. Most people prefer to spend their final days at home surrounded by their loved ones. When the time comes, most people want to die peacefully and with dignity.
The hospice philosophy centers on care for the patient in the context of his or her family and community. Hospice emphasizes comfort and quality of life — not the length of life, which sets it apart from many traditional health disciplines. Hospice is for people with a progressive, life-limiting disease and their families and caregivers. Care and supportive services are brought to the patient, whether they live in a personal residence, assisted living, or nursing home setting, to help make each day the best that it can be. By bringing the care to you, patients and families can focus on being together.
An Interdisciplinary Team Approach
Hunterdon Hospice provides care by an interdisciplinary team of trained professionals, including:
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Social workers
- Certified Home Health Aides*
- Volunteers
- Pharmacists
- Nutritionists
- Physical and Occupational Therapists
As soon as you and your loved ones decide to begin hospice care, Hunterdon Hospice will send a highly qualified hospice nurse and social worker to your home to assess your needs. They will arrange the services you require to ensure comfort and symptom management for the patient as well as support and resources for the family. Under the direction of a physician, hospice uses advanced methods of palliative care — pain and symptom management – which enable the patient to live as comfortably as possible.
Hunterdon Hospice provides certified home health aides to give a hand with personal care as well as the equipment you might need, like a wheelchair or hospital bed. If you would like our chaplain to visit, we can make arrangements. We also have volunteers who can provide companionship or relief for the caregivers so they can do what they need to do, even if it is only a peaceful quiet walk. We have a nurse available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer questions or visit if there is a need.
If inpatient care is required for symptom management, the hospice team can arrange for care to be provided at a contracted hospital or nursing home. And a hospice professional is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide assistance, advice, and support to patients and their families.
Each family also has unique bereavement needs during and after the death of a loved one. The team that cared for a patient continues to follow their family through a bereavement period of up to 13 months. In addition, there are other bereavement services that are available on an ongoing basis to families of hospice patients and individuals in the community who have experienced a loss.