“I Come Because I Can”: Stories of Hope from the Cancer Drop in

Abstract

Hospices are now the established institutionalized home of specialist palliative care practice in the United Kingdom. Despite attempts to widen access, the dominant patient group continues to be cancer sufferers. A multidisciplinary approach to the support of patients characterizes this field of health care, with both skilled professionals and volunteers attending to patients' physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. Day care, as one type of provision within hospice services, has its own practice territory with wide variations now well documented in the literature. This article reports on a participant observation study that explored the day care provision of a community hospice trust located in southern England. Drawing on the concepts of palliative care and hope in the lives of terminally ill people, findings suggest that this facility helps to counter the isolating effects of cancer and that self-comparison acts as motivation to attend day care, contributing to hope for continued survival.