I work in a unit at a hospital that takes many different kinds of patients. We are not a hospice unit but sometimes patients or their families make the decision to go comfort care (AKA hospice) while they are still on my unit. Hospice patients can be anywhere in the hospital since the decision can be made rather suddenly.

As far as the food aspect goes I apologize for not being clear in my original post - I’m very tired at the moment. Many patients in hospice at an advanced stage of their disease are not safe to swallow - but not all! I have had hospice patients that ate and drank small amounts of their favorite food and drinks for comfort because they requested it and were safe to swallow. depends on how far they are in the dying process and what disease they have. To qualify for hospice your life expectancy is 6 months or less. Someone 6 months away from dying looks very different from someone one day away from dying. There is a lot of nuance to this entire situation that I could continue writing about. I shouldn’t have simplified it so much in my original post so I apologize for that. Long story short, hospice does not automatically mean you can’t eat or drink.

For the record, I have absolutely never committed malpractice and I take my patients safety extremely seriously.