Room 715 is not a typical hospital room. Its first occupant, a terminally ill 7-year-old boy who hated the idea of being hospitalized and protested fiercely when he was admitted, surveyed his new quarters with a critical eye. He took in the couch and coffee table, the comfortable window seat, the refrigerator and microwave, not one but two televisions and the gigantic bed adorned with a beautiful homemade quilt. Some of his fears melted away. “I think I could stay here for awhile.”

The room, known for now as the “comfort corner,” is Children’s first formal hospice space for patients and families dealing with end-of-life care. Along with a new patient resource room down the hall, the hospice room is a milestone in cancer care that could be used as a model throughout the hospital.

“Comfort corner” is expected to be formally opened and named this spring; finishing details, such as choosing art for the walls, are still in the works, and the hospital is still seeking a donor to fund an ongoing endowment. But the room is already filling a need by providing a comfortable setting for patients who require in-hospital, palliative, end-of-life care.

Janet Duncan, BSN, RN, a nurse on 7 West and member of the Pediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT), coordinates the hospice room project. “We wanted to have enough room for the patient’s family, in addition to the patient care area,” Duncan explains. The project shares many of the goals of PACT, a collaboration between Children’s and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute focusing on quality-of-life issues for children with advanced, incurable illness. “Helping children and families through the end-of-life experience may be one of the most important things we do,” says Duncan. “Having this pediatric hospice space is an important part of that.”

The space has a decidedly non-institutional atmosphere. Medical equipment is tucked away in a wooden cabinet and the privacy curtain, which can hide away as well, echoes the warm colors of the rug and couch. Sandy Bates, RN, Radiology, took all this into account when Duncan asked her to create a centerpiece for the room. Bates spent two months making a warm, soft quilt with a blue border and plum-colored accents.

The new hospice room has already been used twice. The second patient was a 16-month-old boy who loved to sit in the window seat, watching trucks go by on the street below. “I came into the room one time and the whole family was spread out,” Duncan remembers. “The little boy’s father was eating Chinese takeout at the coffee table; his brothers were eating pizza and watching one of the televisions; his sister was coloring by the window; his mom was over by the bed where he was sleeping. This was really the vision we had for the room from the beginning: a place where the family could be together comfortably in such a difficult time.”

Duncan stresses that, while the room was developed for cancer care, Oncology is willing to coordinate use of the room with other departments. “We want it to be available to any child and family dealing with end-of-life care, not just oncology patients.”

Another important milestone on 7 West was the recent opening of a patient resource room. Part mini-library, part computer center, the resource room’s materials offer a broad variety of cancer-related information, from specifics on diseases, treatments, loss and healing to the personal stories of young cancer patients. Patients and family members can pick up pamphlets, check out books for up to three weeks, conduct Internet searches and e-mail friends and family. (The computers, which are not connected to the hospital network, employ strong Internet filters and are monitored by hospital staff.)