There will be an open house this Saturday, March 15, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Delaware Hospice Center, Independence Commons, 100 Patriots Way in Milford. The center, which is the first free-standing hospice center in Delaware, is scheduled to open to patients in April.
Although other states have free-standing centers, Delaware did not — until now. Delaware Hospice came up with the concept after doing a community needs assessment, and the plans started from there.
“We came up with the concept about three years ago, and started the planning stages and capital campaign,” explained Susan D. Lloyd, president and CEO of Delaware Hospice. “We wanted another option for hospice care, and this is an expansion of that concept.”
The Delaware Hospice Center will feature 16 patient/family suites, family kitchen and dining areas, a central gathering area, a “reflection room,” a family support center for bereavement services, a community resource center for training and education, new offices for home-based services and an outdoor garden.
“The center is designed primarily for symptom management,” Lloyd noted, “but it’s not just the suites. With the community resource center and the family support center, we’ve really put together a home away from home for families to gather.”
Registered nurse Cheryl Watkins, who is the team leader for the center, added that, in addition to supporting the patients, the role of Delaware Hospice also includes supporting the caregivers.
“We’re there to support the caregivers too,” she said. “To make sure they have the education and the supplies they need.”
Currently, Delaware Hospice nurses are part of a team that provide home-based care to people that have a poor prognoses — ones that might be measured in months — either because they want no further aggressive care or because treatment options have been exhausted.
Instead of concentrating on a cure, Delaware Hospice concentrates on comfort, caring and symptom management. “Home” can be whatever the patient calls home — whether it be their residence, a hospital or a nursing home.
Each nurse is assigned a specific geographical area and has a caseload pooling from that area. They work with a social worker, a chaplain and volunteers, as well as with the patient’s own physician.
The team concentrates on symptom management and emotional relief.
“Besides the physical pain they might have, patients also have anxiety and fear. And by educating the patient and the family, we can alleviate some of that anxiety,” offered Watkins.
Along with the social worker, who can provide grief counseling, the nurses can set the patients up with the chaplain or a clergyman of their choosing.
“We can set them up with a priest or rabbi, or something more specific to them. Being a retirement area, we have a lot of people who moved here from somewhere else, who can’t use the [clergyman] they grew up with and knew their whole life.”
As hospice care in the area stands now, in a purely residential setting, things can come up that would require a patient be moved to an acute-care setting, as in a hospital, for a short time frame. With the opening of the Delaware Hospice Center, those patients can be cared for in a more comfortable, home-like setting.
“If a crisis came up — something that couldn’t be managed in the home — like the pain or symptoms suddenly got out of control, usually the patients would go to a hospital and we would visit them there,” said Watkins. “Now, with the center, we can provide that 24-hour acute care in a setting that’s more like home.”
She also offered another example of what the center will be able to do for families and their education.
“If we had to place equipment in the home for a lung cancer patient and do extensive teaching to the family that was totally unprepared, we would be able to do it at the center.”
She added that the center really needs to be seen to be believed.
“It’s a more home-like facility. It does not look like an institution, with the home-like suites,” she emphasized. “Nurses that come up here that have heard about it walk in, and they still get the ‘wow’ factor.”
Lloyd said they have really received an outpouring of support from the community and she hopes to see it continue.
“We’ve really been blessed by the amount of support of this project by Kent and Sussex counties. Of our capital campaign, we’ve already received 60 percent, and are in great shape and hope to continue that effort,” she noted of the $4 million drive.
With this Saturday’s open house Delaware Hospice Center hopes to further introduce itself to the community, with expectations that the first patients will arrive in April.
Modern-day hospice care has its roots with British physician Dame Cicely Saunders and Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Saunders founded the first hospice in the 1960’s — St. Christopher’s in London, England.
Kubler-Ross was the writer of the best-selling book “On Death and Dying” which, based on a series of interviews with patients, identified five stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. She had a life mission of helping people cope with death, dying and grief. Both women sought to bring a dignity back to patients and to open the dialog between patients, families and caregivers about this inevitable stage of life.
Delaware Hospice has been caring for patients and families since 1982 and, as a non-profit, depends on the generosity of the community to cover uncompensated expenses for patient care and specialized programs. It is the largest non-profit hospice in the area and serves more than 2,000 patients each year. For more information, call 1-800-838-9800 or go online at www.dehospice.org.