VITAS Healthcare, a pioneer in the hospice movement since 1978, is the nation’s leading provider of end-of-life care. Our name, derived from the Latin word for “lives,” symbolizes the VITAS mission: to preserve the quality of life for those who have a limited time to live.
Your VITAS hospice team members visit you wherever you call home - whether in a private home, nursing home, assisted living facility or long-term care facility - throughout 22 counties in and near the Greater San Antonio area, from Frio and Bandera to Williamson and Caldwell.
VITAS has hospice offices in San Antonio and San Marcos and the VITAS Inpatient Hospice Unit at Villa Rosa, and we provide hospice care wherever you need it.
Recovering from grief is never easy, whether your caregiving role extended for months or years or was the result of an unexpected death. Your grief is real, and it's compounded by new demands, new feelings, new responsibilities, new people to comfort or contact, and big empty spaces in your heart and life.
The following are articles to help you cope with grief:
- 27 Ways to Heal When Dealing with a Loss
- Coping with Anxiety While Grieving
- Coping with Loss and Grief During the Coronavirus Crisis
- Coping With Public Tragedies and Natural Disasters
- Don't Let Grief Become Depression
- Feelings and Reactions to a Significant Loss
- How To Rebuild Self-Esteem After Losing a Loved One
- Learning to Accept the Unacceptable
- Practical Tasks Following the Death of a Loved One
- The Normal Physical and Mental Symptoms of Grief
- There Is No Right or Wrong When it Comes to Grief
- Ways to Honor a Deceased Loved One
- What Should I Expect as I Grieve
- When Grief Becomes Dangerous
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Children and their feelings are often overlooked when death occurs. Age plays an important part in how much children understand and how we can help them with their grief.
These articles explain how children grieve and ways to support them:
- Children's Developmental Stages Concepts of Death and Responses
- Experiencing Grief as a Teenager
- Guidelines for Children Attending Funerals and Memorial Services
- Guidelines for Helping Grieving Children
- Helping Children Cope With Public Tragedies and Natural Disasters
- What to Say When a Child Asks about Death
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At VITAS we care for patients with an interdisciplinary team comprising a nurse, physician, aide, social worker, and chaplain. Other clinical professionals, from a music therapist to a trained volunteer, may work with the team to help meet the emotional and spiritual needs of the patient and their family. Our teams design personalized care plans to ensure comfort, dignity, and quality of life.
Most of the time, hospice care is brought to the patient at home, since home is where most seriously ill people want to be: in familiar surroundings with familiar routines and familiar faces.
Considering the end of life is not easy, whether you are planning for the future or coping with a serious illness right now. VITAS provides compassionate hospice care to patients with a life-limiting illness, and our palliative care team focuses on symptom management, pain relief, and quality-of-life issues for patients facing chronic, complex, or serious illnesses. Explore a range of supportive, VITAS-provided resources in more detail.
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