Care Dimensions President and CEO Patricia Ahern (center), surrounded by board members and senior management staff, officially opens the new hospice house in Lincoln.
(Full disclosure: Lincoln Squirrel editor Alice Waugh is a volunteer at the Lincoln hospice house.)
Patients are starting to fill the newly opened Care Dimensions Hospice House in Lincoln after it opened its doors at 125 Winter St. last week.
The project was approved in fall 2014 and broke ground two years later. Last month before the arrival of patients, the company hosted an open house for staff and volunteers to tour the 18-bed facility, which serves terminally ill individuals needing hospital-level care for pain and symptom management. Although the building is in Lincoln, vehicles use a driveway located just over the town line in Waltham.
“The Hospice House is not a hospital, nursing home or rehabilitation facility, but a home-like setting where hospice physicians, nurses and support staff provide 24-hour care and where visiting family members can spend quality time, including overnight stays, with their loved one,” explained Patricia Ahern, CEO and president of Care Dimensions. The nursing staff includes four hospice nurses who recently graduated from Care Dimensions’ hospice nurse residency program, which provides intensive training to nurses who are new to hospice and palliative care.
In addition to services from medical personnel, social workers and chaplains, Care Dimensions offers complementary therapies including massage, music and art therapy, Reiki, compassionate touch and pet therapy, as well as bereavement counseling for up to 13 months after the death of any hospice patient—even if that person was not a Care Dimensions patient.
The new facility includes sleeping couches in every patient room, two visitor kitchens and cafe areas, a fish tank, children’s play areas, fireplaces, patios off some patient rooms, a contemplation chapel, and a solarium. There are also personal touches such as afghans and prayer squares knitted by volunteers that patients and families may keep.
For the wider community, the hospice house has a conference room with new multimedia equipment that’s open for use to any nonprofit organization. The building also features artwork loaned by the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. This page has more information and a video tour of the Lincoln facility. Click here to learn about volunteering there, or with hospice patients in their homes or other facilities.
Photos of the Lincoln hospice house (click an image to enlarge):
What a beautiful place, and what a beautiful idea!
And to think it has come to be in a community the size of ours, and
at least some of us had do idea it was here!
Thank you, Alice and the Squirrel!!
Toby Frost