June 28, 2012
Blue Skies Holds Raffle For Employees at Golden Living and Hammond-Whiting Care Center
Blue Skies held a raffle for employees at Golden Living in Merrillville, Indiana and Hammond-Whiting Care Center in Whiting, respectively. Winners received a gift bag from Bath and Body Works. Blue Skies organized this raffle to show our appreciation for the work that the employees at each facility do for all their residents, and the assistance they provide to Blue Skies hospice patients. The winner at Hammond-Whiting was Certified Nursing Assistant Monique Grandberry. The winner at Golden Living was a CNA in the Alzheimer's unit, Shakitrea Tate (pictured below).
June 18, 2012
Joy In Hospice Service
Dr. Cornel West said that "the benchmark of greatness is finding joy in the service of others." The professionals and volunteers at Blue Skies Hospice provide care and comfort to the patients and their families because it brings them joy. Service is a passion at Blue Skies. Patients at Blue Skies are in the hands of loving and giving professionals. The sentiments that Utah hospice workers express in a new article, "End of Life Caregivers Find Joy in Profession," reflect the feelings and beliefs at Blue Skies:
OREM — When Peggy Cann first played her harp in a hospital for a friend, the woman in the next room asked the nurse to "send in the angels" playing the "heavenly music." Now, she uses her music every day to help relieve pain when the medications aren't strong enough to.
Cann is an independent nurse who works with hospice care. Doctors typically refer patients to hospice care when they have a terminal illness, and often times family and friends aren't equipped to handle the transition. That's where Cann and other independent nurses come in.
Cann has been certified to use music for healing and transition. An art-form, she says, that requires being in tune with her patients.
"I'll watch their breathing and it's almost like watching a conductor," Cann said. "If their breathing slows, the music slows and the patient is my conductor for the music."
Virginia Yaeger is one of Cann's patients. She has spent the last 10 months at Greenwood Manor, coping with a mysterious adrenal gland illness. Her only escape, she says, is music.
"It's therapeutic and it lifts my spirits," Yaeger said. "Really, I felt like I was in another realm. I didn't feel like I was here. It was like I was lifted into another realm."
Verna Nelson, a hospice nurse, cared for Yaeger's husband at Greenwood Manor before he passed away years ago. She has seen the benefit of treating people with music, even in the simplest ways.
"Music helps people to relax," Nelson said. "A lot of the problems arise because people are unable to relax and get a good night's rest. Life is much more worthwhile if a person can get a good night's sleep."
Nelson says part of her job is helping her patients and their families accept and somehow move forward through the natural process of life — a process Yaeger says people are reluctant to accept.
"A lot of people don't have the right attitude toward death," Yaeger said. "There's a lot of fear."
Some of that fear she says comes from those who love us most.
"I know several cases here where the person wants to go and they should've died several years ago, but the husband, wife, or children will not let them go," Nelson said.
And some people choose to fight, or concede death, alone.
"People that are alone that say they don't want to bother their family," Nelson said. "They don't want to let them know what they're going through. So it's heartbreaking to see a person who feels alone at the time they know their life is limited."
Jody Dustin has been a hospice nurse for eight years. She has watched many families and individuals cope with the reality of death.
"Hospice is to help maintain hope," Dustin said. "It's to help guide. It's to help educate. It's to bring relief to, maybe, a situation that the patient or the family does not know in what direction to go."
But, she says, that no matter the emotional state of her patients, her job is to follow their lead.
"The patient and the family is the driver and you're there to give the directions. And if they don't want to go down a certain path because they're not ready, then maybe you can just try to find a detour."
Dustin says that the profession isn't a sad one.
"It's very rewarding to be able to be invited into these people's home at such critical emotional time," Dustin says.
But some of the reward may come from the very purpose Dustin serves, who works hard to make the hospice environment positive for patient and caretakers alike. Or because people like Cann find a way to give patients a moment of rest when they need it most.
"It's very satisfying that I might be a messenger," Cann said. "The peace comes from heaven. And if I can bring that and usher that in that's very satisfying."
OREM — When Peggy Cann first played her harp in a hospital for a friend, the woman in the next room asked the nurse to "send in the angels" playing the "heavenly music." Now, she uses her music every day to help relieve pain when the medications aren't strong enough to.
Cann is an independent nurse who works with hospice care. Doctors typically refer patients to hospice care when they have a terminal illness, and often times family and friends aren't equipped to handle the transition. That's where Cann and other independent nurses come in.
Cann has been certified to use music for healing and transition. An art-form, she says, that requires being in tune with her patients.
"I'll watch their breathing and it's almost like watching a conductor," Cann said. "If their breathing slows, the music slows and the patient is my conductor for the music."
Virginia Yaeger is one of Cann's patients. She has spent the last 10 months at Greenwood Manor, coping with a mysterious adrenal gland illness. Her only escape, she says, is music.
It's therapeutic and it lifts my spirits. Really, I felt like I was in another realm. I didn't feel like I was here. It was like I was lifted into another realm.
–- Virginia Yaeger, patient
"It's therapeutic and it lifts my spirits," Yaeger said. "Really, I felt like I was in another realm. I didn't feel like I was here. It was like I was lifted into another realm."
Verna Nelson, a hospice nurse, cared for Yaeger's husband at Greenwood Manor before he passed away years ago. She has seen the benefit of treating people with music, even in the simplest ways.
"Music helps people to relax," Nelson said. "A lot of the problems arise because people are unable to relax and get a good night's rest. Life is much more worthwhile if a person can get a good night's sleep."
Nelson says part of her job is helping her patients and their families accept and somehow move forward through the natural process of life — a process Yaeger says people are reluctant to accept.
"A lot of people don't have the right attitude toward death," Yaeger said. "There's a lot of fear."
Some of that fear she says comes from those who love us most.
"I know several cases here where the person wants to go and they should've died several years ago, but the husband, wife, or children will not let them go," Nelson said.
Hospice is to help maintain hope. It's to help guide. It's to help educate.
–- Jody Dustin, RN
And some people choose to fight, or concede death, alone.
"People that are alone that say they don't want to bother their family," Nelson said. "They don't want to let them know what they're going through. So it's heartbreaking to see a person who feels alone at the time they know their life is limited."
Jody Dustin has been a hospice nurse for eight years. She has watched many families and individuals cope with the reality of death.
"Hospice is to help maintain hope," Dustin said. "It's to help guide. It's to help educate. It's to bring relief to, maybe, a situation that the patient or the family does not know in what direction to go."
But, she says, that no matter the emotional state of her patients, her job is to follow their lead.
"The patient and the family is the driver and you're there to give the directions. And if they don't want to go down a certain path because they're not ready, then maybe you can just try to find a detour."
Dustin says that the profession isn't a sad one.
"It's very rewarding to be able to be invited into these people's home at such critical emotional time," Dustin says.
But some of the reward may come from the very purpose Dustin serves, who works hard to make the hospice environment positive for patient and caretakers alike. Or because people like Cann find a way to give patients a moment of rest when they need it most.
"It's very satisfying that I might be a messenger," Cann said. "The peace comes from heaven. And if I can bring that and usher that in that's very satisfying."
June 6, 2012
Meet The Blue Skies Staff in New Video
Take a moment to watch the new video featuring many members of the Blue Skies Hospice staff. The video gives insight into the compassion and professional care that Blue Skies offers patients and their families.
May 28, 2012
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.
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.
---
Blue Skies Hopsice provides all of these services to patients and their families. For more information please call or email us.
May 8, 2012
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.
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| Residents enjoying the fair |
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| Blues Skies staff and volunteers organized and hosted the event |
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| Kindred Care staff also enjoyed the event |
May 2, 2012
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.
April 16, 2012
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.
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