Discover Comfort and Connection That’s Available to All
When receiving hospice care, you may find yourself seeking comfort beyond your physical and emotional needs. You may want to embrace your spiritual beliefs at a deeper level, or you may find yourself wondering about spiritual ideas for the first time.
These needs and thoughts are normal for this stage of your life, which is why hospice benefits include spiritual support to help you feel comforted and connected. Whether you’re familiar with spirituality or this is entirely new for you, the act of seeking spiritual support during hospice care is called practicing spiritual wellness.
Exploring Spiritual Wellness As a Hospice Patient
Spiritual wellness is much like any form of care. When you receive hospice care in your home for pain and symptom management, your hospice nurse helps you to improve your quality of life. Spiritual wellness is very similar; with the help of a chaplain, your family and friends, or through choices you make on your own, you can enhance your spiritual quality of life.
Consider this list of practices that may spiritually inspire you during hospice care:
- A chaplain: During hospice services, you can receive visits from a chaplain. The chaplain can comfort you, listen, answer questions, pray, read from spiritual texts, and engage in other activities to help you form a spiritual connection with the higher power you believe in.
- Inviting a leader from your religious community to your home: if you already have a religious community, you can ask your pastor, minister, reverend, priest, rabbi, or other religious leader to your home. Most religious leaders in the community are used to visiting people receiving hospice care at home. The person you choose likely already knows you personally and can help you focus on spiritual matters. They can offer prayer, discussion, reading, or any religious activity that you find comforting at this time in your life.
- Meditation: Meditation and mindfulness are forms of self-care that have enormous benefits for people throughout their lives, including while receiving hospice. Research shows that these practices can reduce chronic pain, provide emotional balance, and help put worries, concerns, and fears into perspective.
- Reading on your own: Ask your family and friends to purchase or borrow spiritual or religious books that you feel may be helpful for you to read or listen to. Many books have been written with the purpose of comforting those receiving hospice care, including self-help books, poetry, and stories that delve into spiritual matters.
- Exploring what comforts and calms you: Spirituality is an individual path. If you feel more spiritual through certain practices, such as listening to soothing music or lighting candles, that can be your form of spirituality. The most important thing you can do is find practices that make a difference for you, regardless of anyone else’s view of what spirituality should be.
- Nurturing your relationships: Spirituality isn’t just something you seek as an individual. Your conversations with family and friends can help you feel comfort and connection. As you converse with your loved ones, you may find opportunities to discuss topics such as your legacy, happy memories, and even forgiveness. These conversations can be healing and powerful.
Spiritual Wellness and the Family
Spirituality doesn’t have to be a journey you take alone. Hospice care exists to comfort your family, too. Just as your family caregivers may need to rely on hospice respite care, they might also need spiritual support. It is likely that spiritual and religious thoughts are coming to their minds during this time, too.
- Your family can also speak with your chaplain about matters of spirituality.
- Your religious leader will likely involve your family in conversations with you.
- You and your family may decide to view a religious service together on television.
- Meditation, reading, and other practices may feel more enjoyable if you do them with your loved ones.
It is normal to be concerned about your family during this season of your life. If you offer them tips for developing their own spirituality or get them involved in your practices, your gesture could be impactful for everyone.
Hospice Provides Care For Body, Mind, and Spirit
At first, you may not recognize the many unexpected benefits of hospice care at home. Along with symptom management, equipment and supplies related to the treatment of your life-limiting illness, and an individualized plan of care, hospice also provides:
- On-call nursing, so you can avoid emergency room visits.
- Social workers for emotional support and connections to community resources.
- Bereavement resources for your family.
- Volunteers for companionship and support.
- A chaplain.
- And much more.
Hospice offers you the dignity, compassion, and care you deserve during this phase of life.
Explore more information about hospice, starting with these articles:
