Palliative care services at Sparsh Hospice are provided free of any charge to all patients, including inpatients, outpatients and homecare patients.

Inpatient Care: Sparsh Hospice provides both short term and long term inpatient palliative care. Inpatient palliative care is provided to treat symptoms that cannot be managed at home by family members due to various reasons like the family’s economic status, lack of manpower, lack of skills and training necessary to care for the patient. Most patients, knowing they are living their end-of-life days prefer staying at SPARSH, where they receive utmost care, love and affection from caregiversalong with medical care, and chose to breathe their last here.

Home Care: In many cases family members, though very caring, do not have necessary skills to do the needful to ease the patient’s pain and provide relief. For such cases, ‘Home Care’ service is being provided by SPARSH Team to both cancer as well as few non-cancer terminally ill patients. A team of Sparsh caregivers including a trained nurse, a counsellor and a doctor (when necessary) are sent to help the patient and train the family members to provide better palliative care at home. Home care services include changing of wound dressing, consultation regarding need for radiation and any other information, assessment of progression of disease, counselling the family etc. Frequency of home visits depends on patient need and request from family. A small vehicle received in donation has been engaged permanently, along with a driver, to ensure smooth operation of the home care services. All services provided to home care patients are also free of cost.

Out-patient Care and Consultation: At SPARSH we understand that every patient is unique and needs a plan for receiving care tailored to their own needs and desires. While some patients may need constant care at all hours of the day like our inpatients and homecare patients, there are others who need minor help like doctor’s consultation, changing their wound dressing, replenishment of their medicines and pain patches, etc. All these services are provided absolutely free of any charge to the patients who visit SPARSH as outpatients.

Respite Care: Caring for a terminally ill loved one is not only physically taxing but emotionally difficult too. SPARSH is happy to provide short-term respite care service for the benefit of the family caregivers (attenders) as well as for the patients. Respite care is delivered with the help of our active volunteers who take the place of the family member needing a break to go home and attend to other urgent and important tasks. Sometimes patients also wish to return home for brief periods during their stay at the hospice to visit their family home and receive respite.

Sparsh Team keeps track of and constantly follows up with all out-patients, discharged and home-care patients to check the progress of their disease and to find out how the patient is faring.

Additional Services

Trauma Support – Bereavement visits

Social workers team from Sparsh attends funerals and also visits the patients’ family at their home to extend emotional support to enable family members to cope with the loss of their dear ones. This service is offered only on need basis.

Community Awareness Programmes

Sparsh Team including Counsellors, Doctors, Social Workers and Volunteers regularly conduct community awareness programmes to spread awareness among general public about palliative care for terminally ill cancer patients. The team provides information on palliative care services provided by Sparsh Hospice. The awareness programmes are conducted with the help of:

1. Residential Welfare Associations,
2. Residential Community Meets,
3.  Medical camps organized by different residential colonies, corporates and public bodies (govt.); and many others.

If you wish to organize an awareness programme on palliative care for terminally ill patients in your locality, write to us with your details on
info@sparshhospice.org.