Hospice--compassionate, comprehensive approach to terminal care.

The hospice is a physician-directed, multidisciplinary program of care for terminally ill patients designed to meet their emotional and spiritual as well as their physical needs. Services are provided in the patient's home for as long as possible and then at the hospital, if necessary. Consistent with the hospice's goal of enabling the patient to maintain the highest quality of life possible for as long as possible, every effort is made to relieve enervating symptoms, particularly by administration of analgesics in dosage adequate to control pain. The patient's family and friends are encouraged to participate in care and are given whatever help necessary in coping with their own reactions to the terminal illness. Recent enthusiasm for the hospice concept in this country reflects deficiencies in the care of terminally ill patients that can be attributed in large part to inadequacies in the training physicians receive. By including instruction on the enormous psychologic consequences of illness and impending death, medical schools would better equip future physicians to serve their patients.