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CARING TOGETHER NEWS – JAN 2008

Asociación Caring Together is registered to undertake work of social value throughout the Valencian Community, dedicating itself to the promotion and provision of end-of-life care.

“Hospice” is one of those evocative words that always attract generous donations so it will surprise newcomers to the Costas that we’ve recently added to our website a page entitled “WOT, NO HOSPICE?” The thing is we did our sums in the late’90s and it became obvious that the overheads of running a hospice are far greater than those involved in bringing care to the patient’s home at the end of life. Spain’s Ministry of Health is of the same opinion. They have just sent us a CD entitled Estrategia en Cuidados Paliativas del Sistema Nacional de Salud defining their official views and intentions. These was first outlined in 1996 and we received them in full in pamphlet form in early 2006 and very much approve it. The same information may also be accessed on the Ministry’s website www.msc.es/estrategiassns , which to be updated regularly, they tell us.

Thus it is no surprise to us that one local hospital has gone on record as saying that there was an 80% reduction in their costs when they freed a hospital bed by attending a dying patient at home. And there is little doubt that the cost per patient/bed/night is even higher in a hospice than in a hospital, for there is no way to achieve similar economies of scale.

These facts led us to decide that we will not only provide hospice-type care at home, we will also use some of the funds donated to us to train the workers Spain will need in the future as the demand for their services increases, year by year.

The shortfall of personell trained to work with terminal patients is considerable. (See the end-of year edition of “Información”. which goes into some detail.)

So we hope to offer scholarships to students who wish to include care-of-the-dying in their qualifications. We’ll do this on the recommendation of University Medical Schools and Colleges to assist students who could not otherwise afford to undertake such additional courses. That is how we intend to promote palliative care while continuing to maintain, as funds permit, the provision of this type of care in people’s own homes.

We’ll leave to others the burden of providing hospices, which they will then have to maintain. To our way of thinking that is going to be a waste of donated funds! After all most people would prefer to spend their last days in their own homes! We intend to concentrate on the training of workers to provide the required services and on helping those cannot afford to pay them.

Of course, if a philanthropist decides to build us a hospice and maintain it for us, we’ll not say no. But our emphasis will continue to be on the direct provision of palliative care at home and on the creation of a corps of compassionate doctors, nurses and auxiliaries who want to make a career in this new specialism of palliative care. Their satisfaction will come from the gratitude of their patients and those closest to them. For, with appropriate knowledge & skills, change of domicile to the hereafter can be transformed into an experience which need not be feared by anyone .