Hospice Care

It is the philosophy of Caring. It is also called Palliative Care or Continuing Care. The philosophy is to value life until death, and to give the dying the dignity of breathing their last in surroundings of their choice. The motive is a peaceful and dignified end. The poorer the patient (as most of ours are) the more the need for such care. At Karunashraya, we believe in adding quality to a patient’s remaining life till the last breath he or she takes. We work towards "adding life to days, when we cannot add days to life".

Thus palliative care moves the emphasis to 'caring' when all hope of 'curing' has been lost. Key elements include symptom and pain control, special nursing, specific palliative care round the clock, psychological and emotional support for the patient and the family, in their anticipated grief, through trained social workers, counseling on personal, social, family and other difficulties.

In what is unique our care is a combination of Home Care and In-patient care, each in its own sequence. In short we look after patients from the time they leave hospital when cure is no longer an option and our attention continues until the last breath either in their own homes or in Karunashraya – our fifty-five bed haven of peace.

Up to 1st February 2010 we have admitted about 6,995 patients of whom approximately 4,085 have died - in peace and with dignity.

Home Care

The idea of a Home care service was born out of the realization that, however small and insignificant, the home still serves as a confidence enhancing area. In a scheme quite unique in India, members of the Bangalore Hospice Trust (BHT), decided to take up the not-so-popular cause of caring for the terminally ill from within the family, in their own homes. Home care aims to enable patients to live in their own homes for as long as the nature of disease and its symptomatic effects on the patient permit the patient to receive quality care at home.

The home care teams comprise of multi-disciplinary nurses and social workers, and, at need, the hospice doctor, who gives palliative care including counseling, to patients and families in and around Bangalore. Here again, the psychological support plays a very important role. They also train families to look after the basic needs of the patients like changing of clothes and bed linen, prevention of pressure sores, sponging, administration of palliative drugs etc., until a peaceful end.

Up to 1st February 2010, this service has cared for over 2,345 patients of whom 2,290 have breathed their last, in peace and in dignity.

Palliative Care Education

Having set up our palliative care centre starting from scratch, and with very little expert help, we had to learn by working very hard and with dedicated work. Secondly, being a totally free facility we feel that any amount of replication of our type of care can only help poor and suffering patients. This is how the idea germinated of training other doctors, nurses, counselors, administrators etc. In addition to training such staff we have also encouraged other organizations to set up palliative care centres through our education initiatives. As at the beginning of 2009 we have incubated seven such satellite centres at Shimoga, Chennai, Kalyanpur, Puttur, Mangalore, Nagpur and Vellore.

Education, along with spreading and sharing of knowledge and know-how of Palliative Care, gained through hands on experience during the past 13 years, has a priority role in BHT’s initiatives. These activities are done under the banner of Rotary Indiranagar- BHT Center for Palliative Care Education. They include:

• The Health Assistants Training Programme.
• Seminars and workshops.
• Cardiff University’s Post Graduate Palliative Training Programme.

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