'I am closer to this place':space, place and notions of home in lived experiences of hospice day care

In the United Kingdom hospice day care services are the fastest growing yet least researched of the palliative care services. Using photo-elicitation interviews with 11 day care patients attending a specialist hospice day care setting we explored their experiences of the hospice as a place and how these changed over time. Informed by concepts from existential and humanistic geography we propose three existential modes of being--Drifting, Sheltering and Venturing--which characterize the patients' lived experiences of the hospice. Our phenomenological analysis shows that the hospice is (re)constructed purposefully to achieve a sense of 'home' and 'homelikeness', creating an important therapeutic landscape for patients.