While all hospices offer similar basic services, they differ in their approaches to helping patients and their families face the end-of-life experience. When selecting a hospice, it is important to consider the following competencies.

Safe and comfortable dying: the professional expertise and experience to manage the physical aspects of suffering. The other types of suffering cannot be addressed until the physical pain and symptoms are controlled and the patient and family are confident that they are safe.

Self-determined life closure: the ability to help people spend their final months the way that they wish. Hospice works to help people see that while it may no longer be that they can hope for a cure...there is still much for which to hope. These hopes may be about where they want to die, whom they want to see and what they want to say. This work helps reduce spiritual, social and emotional aspects of suffering.

Effective Grieving: the ability to listen, engage and support the bereaved as they process their grief, as they mourn and as they plan for the future.