LIVING WITH DIGNITY

The Delta Hospice Society is a non-profit charitable organization
​incorporated in 1991 in Delta, British Columbia.

COMMUNITY

We are a community-based organization that exists to help individuals and their families experiencing a life-threatening diagnosis, advanced illness or
​bereavement, live with comfort, meaning, dignity and hope. 
​The Society has a strong volunteer component with over 100 active, specially trained volunteers.

QUALITY CARE

In any setting, our team of trained volunteers, staff, and professional counsellors offer sensitive and supportive care to meet the needs of those who come to us. Practical, emotional, spiritual, and educational supports, advocacy, and medical care are offered through our supportive care centre, our community outreach programs and in our hospice.

EQUALITY

As well as serving the communities of North Delta, Ladner, and Tsawwassen, Delta Hospice is actively involved in advocating for hospice palliative care services at the local, provincial, and national levels. Members of the hospice team are respected and recognized leaders in the development and delivery of unique hospice palliative care programs and volunteer services.

The Modern Hospice Movement

"If a patient asks to be killed, someone has failed him."

-Dame cicely saunders

Dame Cicely Saunders

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Dame Cicely Saunders is the mother of the modern hospice movement. She was a nurse that became a doctor. She was responsible for establishing the discipline and the culture of palliative care. She introduced effective pain management and insisted that dying people need dignity, compassion and respect.  In 1967, she founded the first modern hospice - St. Christopher's  Hospice in south west London. As the first modern hospice it has been imitated all over the world.

Saunders introduced the idea of "total pain", which included the physical, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions of distress. Her patients were given regular relief and not forced to wait until their pain returned. This greatly reduced their fear and anxiety. "It appears many patients feel deserted by their doctors at the end. Ideally the  doctor should remain the centre of a team who would work together to relieve where they cannot heal, to keep the patient's own struggle within his compass and to bring hope and consolation to the end." 

Dame Saunders was strongly against euthanasia because she argued that effective pain control is always possible
and that euthanasia is therefore not needed.

"For over four decades, Palliative Care has been providing expert medical management to assist and support those who are dying without hastening death or administering a lethal dose of drugs to end life."

-Dr. Balfour Mount

DR. BALFOUR MOUNT

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Dr. Balfour Mount was a follower of Dame Cicely Saunders methodology. He worked with her and applied her approach. The founder of the academic discipline of palliative medicine at McGill University (Montreal), it was the first Faculty of Medicine based program in Palliative Care in Canada. Dr. Mount pioneered the palliative care movement in North America and has spent more than 30 years advocating for quality care when cure is not possible.

His work has set Canada on a course to be a world leader in the provision of palliataive care and is an inspiration to those who work to improve quality end-of-life care.

At McGill University's Royal Victoria Hospital the program consisted of an impatient ward, a consultation service, an outpatient clinic, a home care program, a bereavment follow-up service, as well as research and teaching activities. Dr. Mount writes, "The vision that Cicely and I shared was that of a new medical discipline and community culture of care that enabled living fully at the end of life while minimizing the symptoms and fears of the dying process. It was never to intentionally hasten death."

​Dr. Mount further writes, "The MAiD euphemism confuses and causes fear in our patients and the general public regarding the practice of Palliative Care and the nature of Palliative Medicine"

"What Canadian legislators have termed 'medical assistance in dying' is not part of the practice of Palliative Care and the recognized international specialty of Palliative Medicine."

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"Palliative Care affirms life and regards dying as a normal process,
​intends neither to hasten or postpone death."

- WHO DEFINITION OF PALLIATIVE CARE

World Health Organization (WHO)

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Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.
​
Palliative care:

• provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms;
• affirms life and regards dying as a normal process;
  
• intends neither to hasten or postpone death;
  
• integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care;
  
• offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death;
  
• offers a support system to help the family cope during the patients illness and in their own bereavement;
  
• uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated;
  
• will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness;
  
• is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications.
  

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