Aux trois sentiers positions itself as an essential link in the end-of-life journey. The organization offers concrete alternatives to hospitalization through an innovative approach to specialized care, both at home and eventually in an end-of-life residence.
Through a model structured around three complementary components, Aux trois sentiers helps ensure that each person is in the right place, at the right time, with care tailored to their own reality. This approach aims to foster a death marked by humanity and dignity, in accordance with each person’s wishes, while providing meaningful support to their loved ones.
Our approach is:
In 2018, Dr. Caroline Ouellet’s father became ill with an aggressive abdominal cancer.
In 2019, he was hospitalized during the final stage of his life. “He was very clear that he did not want medical assistance in dying. But he also did not want to suffer needlessly.” Unfortunately, things did not unfold as hoped. A series of severe, refractory symptoms followed one another over the course of three days and three nights.
“That prolonged agony affected me not only as a daughter, but also as an anesthesiologist-intensivist accustomed to using sedation and intravenous therapies to relieve suffering. I didn’t understand. I was angry. What shocked me most was the profound conviction that I could provide infinitely better care to complete strangers than I was able to provide to my own father.”
Determined to transform that experience into something meaningful, Dr. Ouellet chose to turn her anger into action and make room for peace. “I chose to channel my energy by putting my medical knowledge and experience at the service of people nearing the end of life.”
The result was the creation of Aux trois sentiers, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing a personalized continuum of specialized end-of-life care for patients and their loved ones.
Aux trois sentiers is a non-profit organization that supports people at end of life and their loved ones who wish to receive specialized palliative care outside of a hospital setting. It acts as an expert and learning centre to develop complementary alternatives to existing services, thereby contributing to the enrichment of palliative care and services offered in Quebec.
Living the end of life on your own terms, with the right support, in the right place.
Aux trois sentiers works to ensure that people at end of life and their loved ones have access to a range of options that allow them to live through this stage according to their own choices, in the setting that suits them best, with support that is tailored to and respectful of what matters most to them.
Innovation
Doing things differently, challenging the status quo to improve end-of-life care.
Compassion
Doing things differently, challenging the status quo to improve end-of-life care.
Sense of community
Building genuine human connections between patients, loved ones, caregivers and network partners, where everyone can rely on bonds of solidarity and collaboration.
Serenity
Embracing moments of crisis and providing support with stability, calm and clarity in the most critical moments.
Aux trois sentiers intervenes at a particularly critical moment in the end-of-life journey: when needs intensify in the final weeks, often during the agony phase.
Our role is to offer, at home, a specialized alternative to hospitalization, through personalized care pathways built with the person and their loved ones, in accordance with their wishes.
Each care plan is adapted to the rapidly evolving situation in order to enable informed decisions, anticipate possible scenarios, and avoid, when desired and possible, returns to the hospital.
Our approach complements the existing services of the healthcare network and other palliative and end-of-life care organizations. We work closely with clinical partners to pilot, in Montreal, an innovative model of specialized care that is freely accessible to eligible patients.
Aux trois sentiers’ niche lies in transposing to the home setting the specialized care typically reserved for hospitals, in order to make it more accessible, more humane and better suited to the reality of people at end of life and their loved ones.
This expertise allows for rapid intervention in complex or evolving situations, particularly regarding pain, refractory symptoms and advanced end-of-life accompaniment.
Among the specialized interventions offered at home:
What sets us apart is our ability to combine specialized medicine, clinical agility and humanity, to allow people to go through this stage as peacefully as possible, in the right place, at the right time.
Coined by Aux trois sentiers, this word represents the innovative approach of dedicated professionals who wish to provide specialized end-of-life care where the patient, their needs, their wishes and their own reality are at the heart of the process.
We bring care and services to patients, rather than asking people at end of life to travel to hospitals.
Let’s work together to help Quebecers who want a dignified end-of-life experience. Let’s have the courage to offer them beauty at the end of life.
