The Common Pathway Welcome to the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Page, dedicated to information about the care of the terminally ill. Hospice care has seen a resurgence recently. Rather than being a morbid field of medicine, hospice care celebrates life.
Death is a part of life that is ignored by most people, including practitioners of the medical arts.
Therefore, there is a huge need for physicians and associated health care team members who are trained in the art of terminal care. Often, health care workers are unwilling to prescribe adequate amounts of pain medication for their terminal patients. However, when death is inevitable, it cannot be seen as a failure, but merely as an end to life. Again, this demonstrates the need for physicians and other health care workers who are interested, and specialize in, terminal care. We cannot ignore terminally ill patients, and in fact, are ethically required to make their death as comfortable as possible.