For immediate release November 1, 2024
Contact: Lisa Veglahn, Sr. VP for Education, [email protected]
Newly Available: Improving Dying
WASHINGTON — Virtual reality, physical therapy, music therapy, pet care, and even a haircut are therapeutic, innovative, and practical ways to improve the quality of life for people with terminal illness and are profiled in a new book and continuing education course recently released by Hospice Foundation of America (HFA).
“End-of-life care providers are doing amazing work that rarely gets the attention it deserves,” said Amy Tucci, HFA’s president and CEO. “With Improving Dying, HFA’s goal is to recognize their efforts and provide models that can be replicated to enhance care for dying and the bereaved.”
Improving Dying, Continuing Education Course: Six providers are featured in this two-hour online course, which includes short documentaries and presentations that focus on how each program works, staffing requirements, benefits, costs, and funding sources.
- Hudson Valley Hospice (NY): Physical, occupational, speech, respiratory therapies; dietician services to improve functionality, including mobility, swallowing, and breathing
- The Connecticut Hospice (CT): Art and music therapies that support reminiscence and life review to ease the dying and bereavement process
- Hospice of the Chesapeake, Chesapeake Life Center (MD): A comprehensive bereavement center open not only to hospice families but also to the public
- Willamette Vital Health (OR): The Pet Peace of Mind Program that cares for pets of hospice patients and provides pet therapy visits for hospice patients and the bereaved
- Hildegard House (KY): A home that allows individuals who have no home or loved ones to care for them to receive hospice
- Hospice Savannah (GA): Virtual reality as a tool to help hospice patients experience “awe” while reducing pain; can also deliver therapeutic benefits to the bereaved.
Improving Dying, Book: The book provides a deeper examination of the important work happening in many hospices, demonstrating the decades-long hospice principle of specialized comfort care for patients, their families, and intimate networks.
“Improving Dying shows how hospice is a complex and nuanced world of its own. Hospice is a world of healing,” writes Brad Stuart, MD, in the book’s foreword.
Chapters cover how hospices can improve the dying process with advance care planning; dignity therapy; life review; complementary therapies; expressive therapies; physical modalities; a volunteer doula program; and competent bereavement care. Additional chapters address improving care for pediatric hospice patients and military veterans; the use of psychedelics in end-of-life care; ritual; virtual reality; pet therapy; and personal services. View the full table of contents here. The book and program can be ordered through HFA’s website or by calling 800-854-3402.
