They come into lives as a last, new best friend, and we entrust our final days to them.
They have the wisdom of a sage and the heart of an angel—they are the nurses, social workers, chaplains, nursing aides who provide hospice care.
November is National Hospice Month. We at Regional Hospice and Palliative Care (RHPC) celebrate this designation, because it means that our country recognizes the importance of hospice care and the difference that specially trained hospice caregivers can make in families’ lives.
Hospice’s caregivers and volunteers possess so much more beyond their credentials: They have a unique calling, a vocation to fill patients’ and families’ lives with joy, dignity and meaning that come from boundless empathy, compassion and clinical excellence.
They help a mother spending her final days at home to put words on paper for her young child to read in years to come. They bring a recluse together with people who have fallen away from his life. At our Center for Comfort Care & Healing, they are found offering trays of a patient’s favorite cookies and rehashing a World Series Game, hosting a tea party with costumes for a little princess with a rare cancer or honoring WWII heroes with medallions and a salute from the Commissioner of Veterans Affairs—hospice caregivers and volunteers make important, joyful moments a part of life—because they mean the world to a patient— whose quality of life means the world to them.
This month, I hope you will take a minute to thank a hospice caregiver or volunteer. They are truly a gift to all of us; a last new friend whose profound compassion makes life even more precious for our patients and the people who love them. It is an honor and a privilege to care for our families, to work among our caregivers, hear their stories and meet families whose lives they impact so deeply.