Residential Hospice Is Another Choice for Palliative and End-of-Life Care

Individuals and families in Toronto have options for end-of-life care, between our excellent hospitals, palliative care centres and home support. Neshama Hospice will offer more capacity and more choice through residential hospice.

Residential hospice embraces a holistic model of family-centred end-of-life care.  Compassion and spirituality permeate every aspect of hospice care as residents and families join a unique home-like environment, immersed in a community where all support each other. Expertise goes far beyond pain and symptom management, as trained staff and volunteers understand that death should not be treated merely as a medical event. Hospice workers view death as a part of life and are there to provide emotional, spiritual and practical support that makes a qualitative difference to the individual’s final days.

According to the World Health Organization, palliative care is:

“an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual.”

End-of-life care is part of palliative care. It is the care one receives during the last part of their life, from the point at which it has become clear that the person is in a progressive state of decline.

For people with a life-limiting illness who want to die at home, but who cannot due to lack of support or resources, a residential hospice offers a choice for compassionate care that may feel more like a home than an institution — and for some people, that is the best choice.