Hospice care (English: hospice or palliative care) Hospice care is not a treatment method, but refers to appropriate hospital or family medical care for patients with limited survival time (6 months or less) to alleviate the symptoms of their diseases and delay the development of the diseases. Hospice care does not pursue violent, painful or meaningless treatment, but requires medical staff to control patients' symptoms with skilled business and good service. Because hospice care inevitably involves palliative care of various symptoms, it is often synonymous with palliative care in the field of oncology.

The goal of hospice care is to improve the quality of life of patients, eliminate or alleviate physical symptoms such as pain, solve psychological problems and mental troubles, and make patients face death calmly. At the same time, hospice care can also help patients' families to bear some fatigue and stress.

Hospice care is different from euthanasia, which neither promotes nor delays the death of patients. Its main tasks include symptomatic treatment, home care, relieving symptoms, controlling pain, reducing or eliminating patients' psychological burden and negative emotions. Therefore, hospice care is usually attended by doctors, nurses, social workers, family members, volunteers, nutritionists and psychologists.

In the dying stage, cancer patients are more afraid of death than physical pain. An American hospice care expert believes that "people's mental pain before dying is greater than their physical pain", so we must do a good job in psychological care of dying patients while controlling and alleviating their physical pain. When the patient enters the dying stage, it begins to be a period of psychological denial. At this time, patients often deny the seriousness of their illness, deny that they are terminally ill, and always hope for a miracle of treatment to save their own death. When the patient learns that his illness is hopeless and has a premonition of facing death, he enters a period of fear of death, which is manifested as fear, irritability and rage. When the patient is convinced that death is inevitable, it will come in an instant. At this time, the patient calmly waits for the arrival of death and enters the acceptance period. Generally speaking, the needs of the dying can be divided into three levels: ① to save life; ② Relieve pain; (3) didn't die painfully. Therefore, when death is inevitable, the biggest needs of patients are peace, avoiding harassment, easy-going companionship of relatives, spiritual comfort and sustenance, and the demand for beauty (flowers, music, etc. ), or some special needs, such as writing a will, meeting the person he wants to see most, and so on. Relatives of patients should try their best to give them spiritual comfort and care, so that they can spend the last moment of their lives without pain.