Don't get me wrong, Hospice is a much needed program and I would not hesitate to use it if I had a painful disease I was dying from, but Hospice DOES shorten the time you have left. I have seen patients refused access to fluids and food and kept heavily sedated with narcotics until their systems give out and it happens over and over. Hospice is not meant to extend the patients life, only to help it end with less suffering. I would not take myself or another family member to hospice unless they were in unbearable pain for that reason.

I agree with you Angela. I have worked in hospice and have never seen over-medication. If the dying patient does not want to eat or drink, that is their right as long as they are in sound mind. We cannot force them to. The only time I have ever seen food withheld from a patient was when they physically could not eat (could not move their mouth). This would always happen a few hours before their death. Also, it is every patient's right to ask for pain meds and not just be given them when the provider thinks it is right. When the patient is in pain, they ask for it if they can and will be given the appropriate dose. If they cannot ask then they can show they are in pain to us one way or anther, but I have never seen pain meds given to a patient who was unconscious.

I have worked with enough hospice to know that they only do pallative care. Of course I cannot say this for all hospice centers, but CassAnn is accusing them of all being that way. I will not stand for that after what I have seen. I've seen my share of them die and how they die is their own bodies shutting down. It is hard to see but, once you can no longer open or close your eyes, it has nothing to do with sedatives. Yes, sedatives do depress the respiratory system, but when someone can't move their muscles or start to be jaundiced, it is not the medications.

All I can speak of is the experience my family had with Hospice care when my mother was leaving us due to pancreatic cancer. If it wasn't for the care and support from Hospice of the Valley, along with a hefty dose of genuine feeling from the caregivers, we would have never made it through. Hospice allowed my mother to be at home, with her family and friends with her, in no pain, peacefully saying goodbye to those of us who love and miss her still. They were a godsend.

I AM a hospice nurse. I've done hospice and nursing home care for almost 20 years. Hospice does not ever refuse food or drink to a patient. However, in the dying process, one starts to have difficulties with eating and swallowing, or begins to aspirate when drinking fluids. This is part of the dying process, not something we would want to do. We encourage fluids as long as the patient can swallow from a straw, or suck fluids out of a sponge to clean their mouth. However, it comes to a point where a patient can no longer suck from a sponge, swallow, and it is also nature's way to begin the dehydration that stops most of the pain. If you are dehydrated, you feel no pain. Also, if you are in the dying process, you are uncomfortable with food in your stomach. the reason people feel this way is because hospice is usually called in about the same time that people begin the dying process, and it sometimes goes quickly. So hospice is blamed for a natural process.

Just as hospice is blamed for giving a patient morphine and that patient dies days later. The person is dying. It really doesn't matter if they die sooner , rather than later, as long as their pain is under control. Life isn't much fun when you are in pain. so we medicate to get rid of pain. Does it sometimes cause a quicker death? Probably it does sometimes. but 3 months relatively pain free is much better than 6 months of pain.