The rooms have homey draperies and furniture, pastel wallpaper and colorful pictures, wood laminate floors, a high-definition TV, and an old-fashioned quilt on the bed. The medical gear is partly hidden, and while there’s no mistaking where you are, it doesn’t feel cold and sterile.
The Westerly Hospital went all-out to make its two new hospice rooms as cozy and pleasant as possible, spending $60,000 on the project, plus another $10,000 to set up a separate room for families to rest and catch up with their lives for a while.
The goal: to give terminally ill patients a gentle, comfortable place to die.
Most people, of course, would rather spend their last days at home. But sometimes the pain and complications are too severe to allow that. Instead, they end up in hospitals, a different and often stressful environment.
There’s a third option, a hospice facility such as the Philip Hulitar Inpatient Center, in Providence, which provides expert end-of-life care in a home-like setting. But the Hulitar Center, run by Home & Hospice Care of Rhode Island, only has 10 beds and is an hour away.
The Connecticut Hospice, another highly regarded facility, is in Branford, also an hour’s drive from Westerly. So for area residents, the choice was between being close to home but uncomfortable, or inconveniencing their loved ones.
It was the family of Alfred M. Roberts Jr., who experienced this dilemma first-hand, who initiated the Westerly hospice project, and they financed the upgrades to the two rooms through a charitable foundation set up in Roberts’ memory. Separately, a donation from the Robert Bonner family provided for the new family lounge.
Home & Hospice Care is also closely involved in the project, providing specialized services such as counselors and social workers and training for the hospital staff. Westerly has long taken hospice patients, and some of the nurses are trained in end-of-life care already, said Margaret Austin, vice president and chief nursing officer, “but this is raising the bar.”
“A lot of hospice is different medicine,” Austin said. “It’s mostly about pain management. You’re not curing, and a lot of doctors want to cure.” And for nurses, it’s less about clinical skill and more “the softer side. It’s the compassionate, caring side.
