Hospice & supportive care

End of life care

Cancer care

End of life care

Hospice care is used when cancer (or another disease or condition) becomes unable to be controlled or cured, and the focus moves to quality of life, pain management and compassion through the last phases of a terminal illness.

Further Information

Contact the central customer service centre on

[email protected] or 0860 NETCARE (0860 638 2273)

Please note that the centre operates on weekdays between 08:00 and 16:00.

Hospice Care

If you are caring for someone who is terminally ill, you might be wondering when hospice care should begin.

Studies have shown that in general, people tend to put off hospice care and that it isn't started soon enough. This can be for a number of very understandable reasons, one being that it can be seen as ‘giving up', that there is no hope. It's not just patients who feel this – doctors and carers can be inclined to resist hospice care. But Hospice care can be stopped at any point, and the patient could always revert to active treatment - Hospice care is about working with the situation to ensure the patient's quality of life is as good as it can be during their advanced stage of illness.

Making the decision

It's generally recommended that hospice care is used when a person is expected to live about 6 months or less if their illness is left to run its course.

If you or a loved one have advanced cancer, it's advisable to sit down with your doctor to discuss Hospice care together, and make decisions over when this should begin. It's a difficult and emotive topic and not an easy conversation to have, but it is important to make sure that the person who needs the care gets the most out of it.

Starting Hospice care can allow people in the advanced stages of cancer to live as comfortably as possible, and be able to live as well as they can, and feel physically and emotionally more able to spend quality time with their family and friends.

Hospice care is an approach to treatment rather than a building or a specific place (as a hospital is). So hospice care could happen in a facility like a hospital, nursing home, or hospice centre, or it could happen in the patient's own home.

Wherever it happens, it will consist of a team of specialists including doctors, nurses, spiritual advisors, social workers and trained volunteers. The team works together with the person who is at the end of their life and their family and loved ones, to make sure they have the support that they need - whether medical, emotional or spiritual.

If the care is at home, a member of the hospice care team will visit regularly. There will also always be somebody available by phone, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. There may be certain times when a patient does need to be in a hospital, extended-care facility, or inpatient hospice center. This can be arranged by your home hospice team who will stay involved in your care, and with your family, with the idea being that you can go back to in-home care when you and your family are ready.

Supportive care

Supportive care is also known as supportive care, symptom management, or sometimes comfort care. It may be provided separately from hospice care (i.e. when the patient is still in active cancer treatment), but it is often part of overall hospice care if the cancer treatment is ending and the disease is in advanced stages. Supportive care, or comfort care does not attempt to treat the cancer itself. Rather it is used to treat or prevent symptoms and side effects from the cancer or the cancer treatment.

Supportive care takes a holistic view of how the cancer is affecting the person and how they are experiencing the disease. It attempts to relieve the symptoms, pain and stress by actively engaging the patient and caregivers in planning the best care options. Supportive care focusses on mental, physical, emotional, social and spiritual issues as appropriate to the patient.

The primary purpose of including supportive care into hospice services is to help patients be comfortable until the last stage of life. More specifically, it means that pain, discomfort, nausea, and other unpleasant side effects are managed so that a patient can feel as good as possible, while remaining alert and energetic enough to spend meaningful time with loved ones, and make important decisions.

Hospice care and supportive care both have similar aims – to provide a better quality of life and the best possible relief from symptoms and side effects for people with an advanced, serious illness. Both types of care have special care teams that will address a person's physical, mental, emotional social, and spiritual needs. And although hospice care often includes supportive care, they are not actually the same thing.

The difference between supportive care and hospice care

When care is given:

Hospice care is provided for patients during the last phase of a terminal illnes or near the end of life. Supportive care however, may be offered and provided at any stage of a serious illness.

What other care can be given:

Hospice care is given when no active or curative treatment is being provided for the illness. During hospice care, treatment involves the appropriate managing of symptoms and side effects.
A patient is who is still receiving active treatment can have supportive care; it could be provided at the same time as chemotherapy, radiation, or immunotherapy.

Hospice care is provided for patients during the last phase of a terminal illness