A revised edition of the classic report on hospice communities includes information on pain and symptom management, and new material on the hospice community's response to the AIDS crisis

The founder of the St. Christopher's Hospice and of the modern hospice movement, Dame Cicely Saunders' work transformed the management of pain and the care of the dying. This updated biography explores her extraordinary life.

This volume explores how hospice care has been taking root throughout much of the world and illustrates how people are finding ways to shape hospice care to the particular needs and resources of their countries and communities. The book begins with a hospice mission statement by Dame Cicely Saunders and is followed by an overview of the international hospice movement by Dr. Jan Stemsward of the World Health Organization. Included are reports from pioneering hospice programs in the Middle East, in tropical Africa, and Croatia.

Written as an introduction for professionals, this book gives the reader an overall grasp of how hospice care is practised, the challenges hospices currently face, and the direction the movement is taking. The author claims that in spite of expansion, people are not aware of the work of hospices.

Offers a comprehensive overview of the practice of hospice, as well as the challenges faced by and the direction of the hospice movement. This book provides chapters that address key topics such as the goals and importance of community involvement, outcome measurement, and the manner in which hospices address death, grief, and bereavement.

Providing much-needed focus on hospice projects in the context of unprecedented rates of societal ageing, this new reference book presents an overview of major recent developments in this rapidly evolving building type. The authors present an overview of the historical origins of the contemporary hospice and the diverse variations on the basic premise of hospice care, and offer a series of case studies of exemplary hospices. The most innovative work in this area over the past decade has been in Japan, the US, Canada and the UK, and the authors describe and analyze examples both as individual projects and as comparable yet differing approaches. Hospice Architecture will be essential reading for anyone involved in the planning, design and construction of hospices.

Born at the end of World War One into a prosperous London family, Cicely Saunders struggled at school before gaining entry to Oxford University to read Politics, Philosophy and Economics. As World War Two gained momentum, she quit academic study to train as a nurse, thereby igniting her lifelong interest in caring for others. Following a back injury, she became a medical social worker, and then in her late 30s, qualified as a physician. By now her focus was on a hugely neglected area of modern health services: the care of the dying. When she opened the world's first modern hospice in 1967 a quiet revolution got underway. Education, research, and clinical practice were combined in a model of 'total care' for terminally ill patients and their families that quickly had a massive impact. In Cicely Saunders: A Life and Legacy, David Clark draws on interviews, correspondence, and the publications of Cicely Saunders to tell the remarkable story of how she pursued her goals through the complexity of her personal life, the skepticism of others, and the pervasive influence of her religious faith. When she died in 2005, her legacy was firmly established in the growing field of hospice and palliative care, which had now gained global recognition.

Winner of the 2012 AJN (American Journal of Nursing) Book of the Year Award in the Hospice and Palliative Care category In the 1960s, English physician and committed Christian Cicely Saunders introduced a new way of treating the terminally ill that she called "hospice care." Emphasizing a holistic and compassionate approach, her model led to the rapid growth of a worldwide hospice movement. Aspects of the early hospice model that stressed attention to the religious dimensions of death and dying, while still recognized and practiced, have developed outside the purview of academic inquiry and consideration. Meanwhile, global migration and multicultural diversification in the West have dramatically altered the profile of contemporary hospice care. In response to these developments, this volume is the first to critically explore how religious understandings of death are manifested and experienced in palliative care settings. Contributors discuss how a "good death" is conceived within the major religious traditions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Chinese religion, and Aboriginal spirituality. A variety of real-world examples are presented in case studies of a Buddhist hospice center in Thailand, Ugandan approaches to dying with HIV/AIDS, Punjabi extended-family hospice care, and pediatric palliative care. The work sheds new light on the significance of religious belief and practice at the end of life, at the many forms religious understanding can take, and at the spiritual pain that so often accompanies the physical pain of the dying person.

Instances of euthanasia or mercy killing date back to antiquity. However, it is only recently that the unprecedented grassroots efforts to legalize euthana sia have begun building. "Terminal Illness, Assistance with Dying," a California ballot initiative for the No vember 1992 election, might for the first time in modem history legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide by physicians. Similar initiatives are planned in other states. To vote intelligently, citizens in California and throughout the United States need to learn who is likely to request euthanasia or assisted suicide, and why. How we care for the terminally ill eventually af fects us all. In over half of all deaths, a chronic dis ease process such as cancer or congestive heart failure leads to a terminal phase that may last for days, weeks, or months. Most people are more afraid of the suffering associated with this terminal phase than they are afraid of dying itself. When polled, most Americans tell us they would prefer to die at home, surrounded by loved ones, rather than in a hospital receiving high-tech tests and treatments until the last. Yet the majority of people, even those with term inal illnesses, die in the hospital. What factors in our culture and health care system have led to this dichotomy? Unrelieved suffering is also the primary reason for euthanasia requests.

"A Collection of essays and reflections, Cicely Saunders explores a deep and enduring preoccupation: the relationship between personal biography, the spiritual life and an ethics of care." --Cover.