​Hospice Information

Hospice Foundation of America
National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization
Hospice Care - American Cancer Society
American Hospice Foundation 
Hospice Care - National Cancer Institute
Hospice and Palliative Care Association of New York State
International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care
Hospice and Palliative Care - US Department of Veterans Affairs

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Hospice Houses in Monroe County

Currently there are only 18 beds available in non-profit comfort care homes in the Greater Rochester area. There is a need for more homes to open as there is often a wait list for beds.

Advent House, 1010 Moseley Road, Fairport, NY 14450
Benincasa Inc., 3880 Rush-Mendon Road, Mendon, NY 14506 
Isaiah House, 71 Prince Street,  Rochester, NY 14605
Journey Home, 994 Long Pond Road, Rochester, NY 14626
Aurora House, 2495 S. Union Street, Spencerport, NY 14559
Mount Carmel House, 288 Frisbee Hill Road, Hilton, NY 14468
The Shepherd Home,1959 Five Mile Line Road, Penfield, NY 14526
Sunset House, 3746 St. Paul Blvd., Rochester, NY 14617 
Webster Comfort Care Home, 700 Holt Road, Webster, NY 14580
Patrick Place, Opening soon in Scottsville, NY

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Recommended Books on Hospice and Dying

Shop via Amazon Smile and select "Story of Hope Comfort Care Home" as your charity and we will receive .5% of sales. These books are recommended by Story of Hope's founder, Arlene Nanry.

Dying Well: Peace and Possibilities at the End of Life, by Ira Byock, MD. 
From Ira Byock, prominent palliative care physician and expert in end of life decisions, a lesson in Dying Well. 
Nobody should have to die in pain. Nobody should have to die alone. This is Ira Byock's dream, and he is dedicating his life to making it come true. Dying Well brings us to the homes and bedsides of families with whom Dr. Byock has worked, telling stories of love and reconciliation in the face of tragedy, pain, medical drama, and conflict. Through the true stories of patients, he shows us that a lot of important emotional work can be accomplished in the final months, weeks, and even days of life. It is a companion for families, showing them how to deal with doctors, how to talk to loved ones—and how to make the end of life as meaningful and enriching as the beginning.

The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life, by Ira Byock, MD
A palliative care doctor on the front lines of hospital care illuminates one of the most important and controversial ethical issues of our time on his quest to transform care through the end of life. Dr. Byock describes what palliative care really is, and-with a doctor's compassion and insight-puts a human face on the issues by telling richly moving, heart-wrenching, and uplifting stories of real people during the most difficult moments in their lives. Byock takes us inside his busy, cutting-edge academic medical center to show what the best care at the end of life can look like and how doctors and nurses can profoundly shape the way families experience loss.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande 
In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.

​Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawand
The struggle to perform well is universal: each of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. But nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives may be on the line with any decision. Atul Gawande, the New York Times bestselling author of Complications, examines, in riveting accounts of medical failure and triumph, how success is achieved in this complex and risk-filled profession. At once unflinching and compassionate, Better is an exhilarating journey, narrated by "arguably the best nonfiction doctor-writer around."

​The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawand 
​In his latest bestseller, Atul Gawande shows what the simple idea of the checklist reveals about the complexity of our lives and how we can deal with it. The modern world has given us stupendous know-how. Yet avoidable failures continue to plague us in health care, government, the law, the financial industry—in almost every realm of organized activity. And the reason is simple: the volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver it to people—consistently, correctly, safely. We train longer, specialize more, use ever-advancing technologies, and still we fail. Atul Gawande makes a compelling argument that we can do better, using the simplest of methods: the checklist. In riveting stories, he reveals what checklists can do, what they can’t, and how they could bring about striking improvements in a variety of fields, from medicine and disaster recovery to professions and businesses of all kinds. 

One Foot In Heaven, Journey of a Hospice Nurse, by Heidi Telpner
​People die everyday. While most people in America die in a hospital, many families choose hospice for end of life care. Death, as experienced by hospice nurses, can be beautiful, peaceful, humorous, touching, tragic, disturbing, and even otherworldly. Hospice nurses act as midwives to dying people every day. Death transforms not just the patient and family, but the hospice nurse as well. The stories in this book are presented with the hope that their transformation extends to you, too.

​Cicely Saunders: The Founder of the Modern Hospice Movement
Dame Cicely Saunders was the founder of the Hospice Movement, in which Britain leads the world. Her work transformed our approach to the care of the dying, and also the debate about euthanasia. She died in 2005 and her memorial service was held in Westminster Abbey in March 2006. This biography includes chapters that cover the years after 1984.

Changing the Way We Die: Compassionate End of Life Care and The Hospice Movement
Changing the Way We Die is a vital resource for anyone who wants to be prepared to face life’s most challenging and universal event. You will learn:

• Hospice use is soaring, yet most people come too late to get the full benefits.
• With the age tsunami, it becomes even more critical for families and patients to choose end-of-life care wisely.
• Hospice at its best is much more than a way to relieve the suffering of dying. It is a way to live.

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing
After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or experience, she found herself working in palliative care.Over the years she spent tending to the needs of those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog about the most common regrets expressed to her by the people she had cared for. The article, also called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, gained so much momentum that it was read by more than three million people around the globe in its first year. At the requests of many, Bronnie now shares her own personal story.Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse past, but by applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for people, if they make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this book, she expresses in a heartfelt retelling how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time.The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a story told through sharing her inspiring and honest journey, which will leave you feeling kinder towards yourself and others, and more determined to live the life you are truly here to live. This delightful memoir is a courageous, life-changing book.

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
How does a dying person learn to live each day “unattached to outcome”? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty? How does a young mother and wife prepare her two young children and adored husband for a loss that will shape the rest of their lives? How do we want to be remembered?

Caring for the Dying: The Doula Approach to a Meaningful Death
Caring for the Dying describes a whole new way to approach death and dying. It explores how the dying and their families can bring deep meaning and great comfort to the care given at the end of a life. Created by Henry Fersko-Weiss, the end-of-life doula model is adapted from the work of birth doulas and helps the dying to find meaning in their life, express that meaning in powerful and beautiful legacies, and plan for the final days. The approach calls for around-the-clock vigil care, so the dying person and their family have the emotional and spiritual support they need along with guidance on signs and symptoms of dying. It also covers the work of reprocessing a death with the family afterward and the early work of grieving.

From Sun to Sun: A Hospice Nurse Reflects on the Art of Dying
Twenty-one people of different ages have one thing in common; they’re within six months of their deaths. They’ve endured the battle of the medical system as they sought cures for their illnesses, and are now settling in to die. Some reconcile, some don’t. Some are gracious, some not. As Nina Angela McKissock, a highly experienced hospice nurse, goes from home to home and within the residential hospice, she shares her journey of deep joy, humorous events, precious stories, and heartbreaking love.