Sentara Bridge Program

Our Bridge Program helps ease that transition, providing tools and support for patients and families to understand their condition, manage pain and make important decisions about their illness while coming to terms with a terminal diagnosis. Sometimes hospice care can get confused with palliative care. The difference is that palliative services occurs when a patient is still in active treatment or is not quite ready to accept the need for hospice.

As part of the program, patients will be assigned a nurse and a social worker, and volunteers and clergy can be assigned if requested. Caregivers may even receive thirteen months of bereavement follow- p should those services be desired.