COMPASSION EMPATHY AND SENSITIVITY-JIM BOUCHARD ON HOSPICE AND HOME CARE

Our guest, Jim Bouchard, is the Director of Marketing & Development for Androscoggin Home Care & Hospice (AHCH). Your hosts, Burl and Merry, received compassionate support in caring for Burl’s mother, Mary Ann Hall, during the final months of her life from AHCH.  In gratitude, we wish to share the empatheic and responsive care Mary Ann and we, as caregivers, received with our listeners.

AHCH “cares for the health, independence, and quality of life of Maine residents and their families in the comfort of their home and community.  When a person is ill or homebound, the power to heal involves more than medical treatment. It's also the touch of a hand or the warmth of a smile.”  The agency has a longstanding community service mission focused on building and sustaining a continuum of in-home services to address the acute, long-term and end-of-life care needs of individuals and their families. 

Hospice emphasizes palliative rather than curative treatment; quality rather than quantity of life. The dying are comforted. Professional medical care is given, and sophisticated symptom relief provided. Hospice affirms life and regards dying as a normal process. Hospice neither hastens nor postpones death. 

We are especially moved by the final days Mary Ann and we spent at Hospice House, thoughtfully designed to be sensitive to the needs of patients and their families, "allowing family members to be relieved of the role of caregiver and focus solely on gathering together to support their loved one.”

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