Ambulantes Hospiz Oberhausen e.V. (Out-patient hospice Oberhausen)

The term hospice does not primarily represent a building or an institution. It rather represents the concept of a caring, psychosocial aid for dying persons and their relatives. Their major goal is the maintenance or the creation of quality of life. The 85 committed volunteers of the Ambulantes Hospiz Oberhausen e.V., which was founded on March 07, 1997, use their unlimited empathy to determine the specific needs of the dying person. The volunteers receive a qualified familiarisation over a period of 11 months and they work on a very high level due to their continuous training. The employee qualification is an important focus within the hospice work. The Lions Club Oberhausen helps with generous donations. The services are free of charge for the affected persons. The Ambulante Hospiz is solely financed by its members and by donations. 

"I would like to die at home," say most persons when asked where they want to spent the last phase of their life. However, the reality is different. 2/3 of the people in Germany die in hospitals, another quarter die in old-age and nursing homes. Only a few people get their wish fulfilled to die at home. This means that the dying person often does not receive the required attention. Physicians and nursing staff are often overextended. Cost pressures and personnel reductions will increase the deficits significantly during the next few years.

In the end, the location where the person dies is not important but how the person dies. "At home" does not only mean the premises where the person used to live but it symbolises care, the feeling of security and the nearness of familiar people. In the past, witnessing the death of a person was an existential experience that children could make at home. This direct experience is now rare for most people. Dying, death and grief are difficult to endure in a society that focuses on growth and performance orientation. By repressing death, we also repress the dying person. The relatives will be left alone in their support and later in their grief. Many hospice initiatives have been developed due to this society-political reality. It is their objective to encourage persons to accept the limitation of their own lives and to grapple with the issue. They want to highlight that death is a reality that is part of life. Through their intense support of dying persons and their relatives, they want to enable the experience that dying is the life before death.