Barry R. Ashpole: HOSPICES CAN BE AN INVALUABLE RESOURCE for prison healthcare services.1,2 As has been demonstrated, notably in the U.K., community hospices “bring to the table” experience and expertise in the education, training and support of custodial staff.3 The chief beneficiaries, however, are the recipients of end-of-life care – the prison inmates.
If hospices are about giving a voice to people who ordinarily don’t have one, this work should sit at the front and centre of what we do. […] Prisoners have the same right to healthcare as everybody else.3
Unquestionably, the challenges in providing quality end-of-life care in prisons are formidable. For example, the issue of security has to be weighed against the rights of prison inmates to healthcare comparable to what is available in “the outside world.”
Little is known about the role played by community-based hospices in helping to provide end-of-life care to people in Canadian prisons.
This commentary is a call to Canadian hospices who are currently partnering with prisons in their community – either federal or provincial facilities – to share their experiences.
I would welcome the opportunity of talking with hospice staff for a planned article on the Canadian experience. Strict confidentially will be observed and nothing published without prior consent.
By way of further background, interested parties might like to review a couple of articles listed below that would help “set the stage,” so to speak, for a dialogue on an important public health issue.4,5 If interested, please contact the author at BarryRAshpole@bell.net.
References
- ‘Engaging the hospice community in end-of-life care in prisons (Part 1), eHospice, 6 December 2024. https://bit.ly/41k6IqU
- Engaging the hospice community in end-of-life care in prisons (Part 2), eHospice, 21 January 2025. https://bit.ly/4g93tXc
- ‘Dying Behind Bars: How can we better support people in prison at the end-of-life,’ Hospice UK (2020). https://bit.ly/4bE9RU9
- ‘Caring, sharing, preparing and declaring: how do hospices support prisons to provide palliative and end of life care? A qualitative descriptive study using telephone interviews,’ Palliative Medicine, 2021:35(3) 563-573. https://bit.ly/4lsdiST
- ‘How do people in prison access palliative care? A scoping review of models of palliative care delivery for people in prison in high-income countries,’ Palliative Medicine, 2024;38(5):517-534 https://bit.ly/3HZmGiv
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