“Hospice” can be a loaded term. Some see it as synonymous with death and “giving up”, as Courtney, a full-time hospice nurse practitioner in Missouri, puts it. But Courtney, who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons, doesn’t see it that way.

“Hospice is giving someone a gift,” she says of her patients, who have typically received a terminal diagnosis with a timeline of six months or less. “It is giving them the gift of being able to stay at home and eat or not eat whatever they want. It is the gift of comfort.”

Courtney first started working with dying patients when she was an oncology nurse. Patients would come to her from the intensive care unit (ICU) or other areas of the hospital when they had a limited time to live and were on comfort measures only – a medical term for care that focuses on relieving pain and distress rather than prolonging life.

“I fell in love with it,” says Courtney.…