ABSTRACT
Hospice is both a response to the existing status of health care and a stimulus to the health care system to respond to changing societal values. Hospice care focuses on living rather than on dying, and on living to the fullest whatever time remains. Over the last five years, the Hospice Program at St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center has attempted to offer this type of care and caring to terminally ill patients and their loved ones. It seemed only right and just that the Hospice staff extend its expertise-the fruit of its experiences with so many other suffering peoples, to the group of afflicted persons. The lover of one Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) patient shared some thoughts with the doctor: she have not touched on the physical pain of AIDS. Hospice extends itself to parents and other loved ones, compassionate understanding of their sorrow and pain. It offers warmth and caring as intervenes with the best each involved profession can summon.
