How Hospice Supports Your Family Through Grief and Loss

Rev. Donna Marie Tetreault is a hospice chaplain and an active member of Compassion Sabbath, an interfaith working group which provides ongoing education for religious leaders to help with the needs of the dying in their faith communities. Throughout her experience in religious work and counseling, she has seen the effectiveness of hospice. She writes that it can support families through grief and loss. "The team of nurses, social workers, chaplains, home health aides, volunteers, bereavement coordinators, and the medical director, " she explains, "can help you navigate through the waves of grief."

Rev. Tetreault identifies four essential services hospice provides or facilitates:

Hospice listens and lets you express your grief: Hospice team members provide ongoing support and listening as medical, spiritual, and emotional needs and tasks arise. Hospice focuses on the one who is dying as well as on those they will leave behind. The plan for care identifies specific needs for education about the disease process unfolding, what to expect as death nears and occurs, and the bereavement support and guidance that is most helpful and appropriate.

Hospice provides encouragement, guidance, and education: These discussions, led in a compassionate and gentle way, address advance directives such as tube feedings, resuscitation, hospitalization, nursing home placement, and funeral planning. While these are tough topics to discuss, moving through them in ways that respect the dying person's wishes, cultural expectations, and religious practices can help to ease some of the uncertainty and fears of the unknown. Hospice offers a holistic approach, recognizing the unique physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the patient and their loved ones. In this way, the journey towards life's end is lived out with dignity and respect.

Hospice helps you work through relationship issues: One of the most common experiences of anticipatory grief - the grief felt be loved ones in ancious anticipation of the approaching death - is undeserved guilt. Often family members regret past times of anger or seperation from the one who is now dying, or blame themselves for not recognizing symptoms earlier or not pushing for more aggressive treatments or therapies. Hospice works through these natural concerns with you, allowing you to see both the good and the stressful in all reltioanships, and to realize the limitations we all have in wanting and providing the best for those we love.

Hospice assists with planning and care issues: Other supports that hospice team members provide are education and guidance related to the tasks and expectations as death nears. While no one can predict just when and how death will occur, there are physical signs and symptoms that life is ebbing away. The hospice nurse, working with the primary physician and medical director, provides medications for comfort that help relieve a patient's physical adn emotional distress. The social worker can help you determine the availability of appropriate community resources, veterans benefits, adn other other services. The chaplain is available to contact a family's own pastoral minister, to offer blessings and prayers, to counsel and guide, and to officiate at a service if so desired. Hospice team members are available to accompany you through the funeral observances.

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Blue Skies Hopsice provides all of these services to patients and their families. For more information please call or email us.

Blue Skies Hosts Country Fair at Kindred Care

On April 26th, the Blues Skies Hospice staff and volunteers organized and hosted a country fair event for hospice and non-hospice residents at Kindred Care in Dyer, Indiana. Residents had their picture taken with clowns, played games for prizes, and enjoyed ice cream and music. The event was a fun success.

Residents enjoying the fair

Blues Skies staff and volunteers organized and hosted the event





Kindred Care staff also enjoyed the event

Jewish Hospice Network Declares Importance of Hospice Care

Blue Skies Hospice serves and will continue to serve patients and families of all faiths and no faith. Members of the Jewish faith are organizing the Jewish Hospice Network to emphasize the medical and spiritual importance of hospice. Jewish Exponent published a wonderful account of the JHN, and the work they are doing. The article contains a Jewish story and how one Rabbi believes it symbolizes the importance of hospice care:

Rabbi Tsurah August of the Jewish Hospice Network -- of which Wissahickon Hospice is a partner -- said that when she met with Ira at his home, she looked for his connections to Judaism. Ira played music, and August discovered a shofar in one of his instrument cases.

Since it was the month of Elul, which precedes the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, she told Ira about the hallowed tradition of blowing the shofar each day of that month.

She also talked about some of the shofar's symbolism.

One of them is that when a shofar sounds, it blasts through the boundaries between this world and the next; even though Ira had trouble breathing, he blew the shofar each day of Elul until he fell into a coma and died at the end of October.

August, who was ordained at the Academy for Jewish Religion, in New York City, said this activity was meaningful for Ira and gave him something to do when he no longer had the energy for his many interests.

This, she said, reflects the importance of hospice care in enhancing the quality of a patient's life.

Viral Video Demonstrates Power of Music Therapy

This blog recently featured a post about the power of music therapy, and how more and more hospices, including Blue Skies, are integrating music into their care and treatment of patients. A popular video circulating the web demonstrates the affect of music on patients, even those with dementia, more effectively than any words.

The Use of Music in Hospice

One of the purposes of hospice is to bring comfort to the dying and provide loving assistance in their transition into the end-of-life process. Music is a universal healer that speaks the language of the emotions. In the words of jazz critic Stanley Crouch, "it makes the invisible audible."

Music, therefore, can be an invaluable tool in providing aid and comfort to hospice patients. Blues Skies hospice volunteers have used music therapy in their visitation with patients, and part of the volunteer training includes education in the value of music therapy.

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently ran a moving article on a New England hospice that uses music to a great extent in its effort to ease the pain and uplift the emotion of terminal patients.

Terre Mirsch, administrator of Holy Redeemer Hospice, said the value of music as a therapeutic tool has been getting more attention than in the past. Her program makes a point of including alternative treatments like massage and aromatherapy.

Music helps with "life review" - a favorite old song will almost certainly trigger a story - and it soothes people who are often anxious and uncomfortable. "It breaks the fight-or-flight response," Mirsch said.

Claire Fore, a former nun who works as a chaplain for Holy Redeemer, said she realized that music could change her own mood and has used it more and more with clients. She sings and plays an instrument called a QChord Digital SongCard Guitar. As soon as she starts to play, she said, "the facial expression changes. ... The body changes. ... I've had patients say to me they feel like they're in heaven."

There is no single forumla for hospice care. Blues Skies hospice tailors its care to the needs of the patient and her family. When music is helpful, it will use music. The example of the inspiration and comfor that Holy Redeemer hospice provides is one among many of the great meaning and value of hospice.

Hospice Use Contines to Rise Nationwide

A new study, published by Harden Hospice, confirms that the use of hospice in the United States continues to rise.

"The findings in this report support what we see every day," Lew Little, chief executive officer of Harden Healthcare, said. "An increasing number of patients and their families are realizing the unique blend of clinical, social and spiritual support services that hospice care provides. Hospice services allow them to focus on spending quality time with friends and family rather than on care-giving details during this difficult time. Hospice is also there to support the family after the loss of a loved one."

The statistical finds of the report reveal the nature of the growth of hospice care:

Almost 42 percent of all deaths in the United States took place under hospice care in 2010.

An estimated 1.58 million patients received hospice services in 2010.

The median time people spent in hospice care before dying was about 20 days.

Sixty-six percent of hospice patients died in their homes; 42 percent in a private residence other than their own homes; 21 percent in a "hospice house" and 18 percent in nursing homes.

Hospice patients died mostly of cancer (35.6 percent), followed by heart disease (14.3 percent).

The first hospice program in the United States opened in 1974, and currently, there are more than 5,000 programs nationwide.

The Medicare hospice benefit, enacted by Congress in 1982, is the major source of funding for hospice care.

Hospice provides an invaluable service to terminal patients and their families. If you have questions about Blues Skies Hospice please call (219) 554-0688.

 

Blue Skies Volunteer Julie Hancin Wins Volunteer Award

On March 22, 2012 the City of Hammond held a banquet for community volunteers and social service providers. Blues Skies Hospice volunteer Julie Hancin was one of four recipients of the prestigious Individual Adult Volunteer Award. The entire Blues Skies staff attended the ceremony to congratulate Julie. Ms. Hancin began volunteering with Blue Skies in 2007, and has brought her care, compassion, and commitment to excellence to the patients and families of Blue Skies with a selfless dedication to service. She represents the purpose, mission, and meaning of Blue Skies Hopsice.

Volunteer Coordinator Pearl Masciotra (left) and Julie Hancin (right) at the Banquet

Julie Hancin with the other award winners

The Blue Skies Hospice Staff