e, assisted suicide, access to hospice, benefits of hospice care over traditional care, hospice development, hospice integration, types of hospice, attitudes toward death, chronic pain, and the stress of giving hospice care.
             The first issue is the importance of individuality. Belief in the uniqueness of the individual is an essential part of the hospice philosophy. Two aspects of the health care system complicate this belief. The first problem is that traditional health care institutions in the US were begun during the Industrial Age and are still run under the ideals of maximizing efficiency and maintaining cold precision. What they intend to produce is disease free patients. The second problem is that health care practitioners are unable to empathize to a sufficient degree with their patients. Patients in a hospital are expected to be well behaved; health care workers label patients who assert themselves as "troublesome". A major component of the hospice concept is respect for the individual. It is a perspective that is concerned wit
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