Within the last sixty years, hospice and palliative care services have gained a reputable position in the medical community. This was due mostly to the pioneering work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), who in 1969 published On Death and Dying, a scathing indictment of the medical community's ignorance, insensitivity, fear, and approach to death and dying. In the words of Time magazine, Dr. Kübler-Ross "has brought death out of the darkness." Not long after Kübler-Ross's book came out, federal legislation facilitated a hospice benefit for Medicare, and private insurers followed suit. This benefit is now available to people over sixty-five with a prognosis of six months or less to live. As a result, hospice agencies sprouted throughout the United States.
The goal of hospice care is not to cure the disease but to reduce the symptoms of the disease by providing physical, emotional, and spiritual support to the patient and family. This means that treatment is palliative in nature and does not include such measures as cardiopulmonary resuscitation or other advanced life-support systems. The person signing onto the hospice program agrees to forego any further curative medical treatment for his or her disease.
The goal of hospice care is not to cure the disease but to reduce the symptoms of the disease by providing physical, emotional, and spiritual support to the patient and family. This means that treatment is palliative in nature and does not include such measures as cardiopulmonary resuscitation or other advanced life-support systems. The person signing onto the hospice program agrees to forego any further curative medical treatment for his or her disease.
As mentioned already the goal of hospice care is to alleviate the suffering that is associated with death, not only spiritually, but also mentally and physically. This is an admirable goal for the Christian and should be viewed as such. Jesus alleviated spiritual, mental and physical anguish everywhere he went. In order to accomplish this task, hospice agencies have several medications to assist them. There are two major groups of medications: psychotropic drugs (that treat anxiety, depression, psychosis, neuropathic pain, etc.) and narcotics (that treat visceral, somatic pain and shortness of breath). These medications are not used to hasten death as some people fear, but they are used to treat symptoms in order to alleviate pain and suffering, provide comfort and enhance a dying person's quality of life.
CHCF shares these goals. As a ministry of the Church, however, these goals are viewed in the context of one's relationship to Jesus Christ. This is not the case for most hospices. Due to Medicare requirements hospices are required to provide "spiritual care" that is humanistic (man-centered as opposed to Jesus-centered), pluralistic (Jesus is one God among many) and agnostic (neither negates nor affirms the teachings of Jesus). As a result government subsidized hospice programs deny that Jesus is God, reject the absolute truth claims of Jesus, and remain undecided about the doctrines Jesus taught. Instead these programs affirm: "self-determined life closure," an assumption that "spiritual suffering cannot be totally alleviated," and an assured belief that faith is the acceptance of something or someone like God "without objective proof" (Core Curriculum for the Generalist and Palliative Hospice Nurse, 152).
It is impossible for a hospice to provide spiritually sound care and counsel from a Christian perspective on suffering, pain, guilt, sin, hope, the afterlife, and comfort when these underlying assumptions are embraced. CHCF seeks to fill this void by keeping end-of-life care centered upon Jesus, while at the same time affirming the benefits of a local hospice and palliative care program.
