Florence Wald, a former Yale nursing dean whose interest in compassionate care led her to launch the first U.S. hospice program, has died. She was 91. [snip]
Wald's recent work included efforts to bring more hospice care to U.S. prisons and train inmates as hospice volunteers.
Wald was born in New York and graduated from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts in 1938 before receiving her master's degree in nursing from Yale in 1941. She was a nurse, research assistant and teacher before becoming dean of Yale's College of Nursing in 1959.
The hospice movement, which includes more than 3,200 programs nationwide, focuses on providing care for terminally ill patients and their families.
Wald has said that before hospice, many physicians were so focused on the evolving technology of medicine that their attention to patients' needs was being eroded.
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I am inspired to write this diary because my father received hospice care when he was close to death from cirrhosis. I was amazed at the hospice service and how they go about their care. When I am able, I hope to associate myself with hospice one day (I am currently a victim of the Bush economy and scrambling to find a job before my outsourcing deadline).
While my father was a rare recovery patient, he has since been diagnosed with liver cancer, a common side-effect of alcohol-induced cirrhosis (when the body no longer gets the alcohol, the scarred, cirrhotic tissue can turn cancerous as it tries to heal itself).
As to Wald's assertion that physicians were so focused on technology and medicine that patients' needs were getting eroded, some things apparently never change: the nefarious influence of Big Pharma and Big Insurance has been around a long time. Doctors share some of the blame as well since doctors can be self-serving professionals just like the best of them.
With my father, hospice workers' "prescriptions" for diet and exercise far surpassed in efficacy his physicians' care in "curing" my dad's life-threatening situation.
God bless Florence Wald and hospice workers everywhere.
In case you want to donate to hospice, here's the link: http://www.hospicenet.org/...