End of life issues: hospice and palliative care

Guests: Karen Martin, Anne Heinold, Ron Messner

Show notes:
• What is palliative care?
• How is hospice and palliative care initiated?
• What is the difference between hospice and palliative care?
• Palliative care availability is more concentrated in larger urban areas.
• What is hospice care?
• How and where is hospice care administered?
• Most insurances cover both palliative and hospice care.
• Spiritual services provided with hospice care.
• Use of volunteers in hospice care.
• What hospice is not. It is not 24 hour care.
• No support for euthanasia.
• Emphasis on comfort, not hastening death.
• Decisions are not black and white.
• Experiences of joy as a believer dies; seeing the sting of death removed.
• Depressing experiences of seeing an unbeliever die.