Mission:   Operate as a non-profit organization to provide the highest level of care and comfort to patients with life-limiting illness, support and counseling to families, and education to the community.  

 

Need:  Brunswick County, as one of the fastest growing counties in the nation, most desperately needed a hospice care center.  With the leadership of W.J. and Sybil McLamb and the generosity of donors, that included ORCA’s $10,000 contribution, the seven-bed SECU Hospice House of Brunswick facility opened in June 2012, and patients needing acute, end-of-life hospice services or counseling avoided an hour long journey to the Wilmington or Whiteville facilities.

 

Methods:  Hospice is a benefit that offers healthcare, assistance, and education to support patients and their families facing the challenges of an advanced illness. It is individualized care that offers compassion, dignity, comfort, respect, and someone to call for assistance, anytime day or night. 
Infants, children, and adults who face an advanced illness can qualify as hospice patients.    
 

The services provided at the hospice care center and for patients served in their place of residence are varied and support not only the patient, but support the family members as well.  These include:

• Around the clock pain and symptom management

• Physicians who develop and oversee patient plans of care

• Specialized nurses who provide care to patients and education to families

• Certified nursing assistants who provide personal care

• Social workers who provide individual and family counseling, provide assistance with understanding financial options, and help communicate needs within the healthcare system

• Chaplains who provide spiritual counseling and support

• Bereavement counselors who offer grief counseling and education

• Volunteers who provide respite, companionship and assistance

 

Results:   Lower Cape Fear Hospice serves more than 4,800 patients annually through hospice, palliative care and bereavement services.  It has been serving patients in coastal North and South Carolina since 1980, and touches the lives of more than 750 hospice and palliative care patients each day.  SECU Hospice House of Brunswick, Lower Cape Fear Hospice’s inpatient care center in Bolivia, has seven private patient/family suites.  Since it opened in June 2012, approximately 870 patients have been served in the Brunswick County care center.

 

Ocean Ridge residents support SECU Hospice House of Brunswick in numerous ways:  provide food (“Meals of Love”) for the families visiting the facility; volunteer their time, and donate to the hospice center through ORCA’s Memorial Fund.  Additionally ORCA sponsors neighbor volunteers who make dolls and angels to give patients and children comfort or relieve stress, and angels are provided to family members within the patient’s belongings as a tender remembrance.

 

Personal Story:  At an ORCA sponsored orientation of hospice services, a neighbor stood up and told how hospice helped her manage the pain of her fatal illness.  She conveyed how they taught her to take control over her life, how to die with dignity, and to anticipate and experience her remaining days as pleasantly and as fearlessly as possible.  She was grateful that hospice helped her family prepare for each stage of her worsening illness, especially dealing with their grief.  She said neither she nor her family could have ever endured her journey without hospice’s help, and it relieved her mind to know Hospice would be there for her family after she was gone.