HosPooch volunteer Tino greets a Florida Hospital HospiceCare patient.
The photograph, entitled “Hospice Volunteers Come in All Shapes and Sizes,” is of a Pet Partner visit to Virginia Richardson, a Florida Hospital HospiceCare patient at skilled nursing and rehabilitation center, Avanté, located at 170 North Kings Road, Ormond Beach.
Tino, a trained Florida Hospital HospiceCare Pet Partner, visits Florida Hospital HospiceCare patients each week. This unique program provides local residents the opportunity to improve the social and emotional health of HospiceCare patients by allowing them to interact with their pet.
“The Pet Partners program benefits our HospiceCare patients by reducing patients’ isolation, providing entertainment and a distraction from pain and boredom, and more,” said Cathy Coates, Florida Hospital HospiceCare Community Liaison and photographer of the winning photograph. “In fact, clinical documentation supports the animal-human bond that confirms the reduction of blood pressure, reduction of depression as well as systemic changes of stress hormones.”
“There were over 130 entries in all the combined categories and our judges had quite the job selecting the few winning entries,” Grace Zupancic, Office of Strategic Communications for NHPCO, wrote in an email.
The winning photos, including Florida Hospital HospiceCare’
About Florida Hospital HospiceCare
Florida Hospital HospiceCare, a division of Florida Hospital Flagler and Adventist Health System, is the area’s only faith based, not-for-profit hospice organization accredited by The Joint Commission. Florida Hospital HospiceCare has provided “life affirming care” to the residents of Volusia and Flagler Counties facing life-limiting illnesses and injuries since 1996 and extended services to Orange and Osceola Counties in 2011. With an interdisciplinary team of hospice-trained specialists, Florida Hospital HospiceCare provides services to those in need, whether the patient is in their own home or in one of the Florida Hospital HospiceCare inpatients units designed for acute care. For more information on Florida Hospital HospiceCare, call our administrative office at 386-671-2138 or 1-800-404-1133 or visit http://www.fhhospicecare.org.
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
