How Hospice Workers Cope with Death
Before you need the cremation services offered in Camillus, NY, you or a loved one may be one of the many Americans who is choosing hospice care as their end of life choice. Hospice care, when done well, is one of the best choices any of us can make as we near life’s end and we decide to forego – or there simply is no more – life-extending medical intervention for the illness that we will die from.
Hospice care workers, for the most part, have a different temperament and approach than their peers outside of hospice. Composed of nurses, social workers, chaplains, and certified nursing assistants (CNAs), hospice workers spend more quality time with their patients.
They extend that care to the families of their patients, offering comfort and support to everyone involved. So, knowing that and watching it in action, a logical question arises. How do hospice worker’s cope with the deaths of the patients they are caring for?
Of all the medical professions, hospice care is the one most constantly exposed to death and dying. Of all professions in general, hospice care and funeral homes are the ones where their staffs go to work knowing that dying and death lay ahead.
Hospice care workers choose that profession, in part, because they find it satisfying, fulfilling, and life-affirming. They truly make a positive difference in not just a dying person’s life, but also in the lives of the family of the person who is dying.
Many hospice workers cope with death in a healthy way. They recognize it as a part of life, and they often feel blessed to watch the process as families come together for the person who is dying and as they’re able to help the dying process be as comfortable as possible for both the person who is dying and for their families.
Many hospice workers see their work with the dying as a calling. Hospice care requires close interaction with the dying patient and their families. It requires taking the time to sit down, to hold a hand, to hug and reassure a family member, to listen to everyone attentively, and to respond immediately and appropriately.
Of all the professionals who are involved in hospice care, perhaps chaplains are the most naturally equipped for this slower-paced, closely-involved time with the dying and their families.
In most medical jobs now, the focus is on production: get people in, get a procedure done, get them out, and repeat. The rise of for-profit companies running healthcare is one reason for this. The other reason is that private insurance and public insurance, like Medicaid and Medicare, pay premium prices for procedures, while they pay almost nothing for consultations (or time simply spent with the patient).
Therefore, many medical professionals have adopted a “get-them-in, get-them-out” mindset that doesn’t work in the hospice care environment. So, the medical professionals who are there have a different mindset.
The same is true of social workers. Many social workers end up in city, state, or government jobs where the workloads are crushing and, sometimes, they don’t know most of people whose cases are assigned to them. The mindset in this kind of environment can be one of just getting through each day.
In hospice care, however, social workers are engaged and taking care of arranging and supplying support and support services to the dying patient and their family.
Because of this, all these different hospice care workers, while affected by the deaths of those they’ve cared for, also see value in a life lived as well as possible to the end and their part in making that a reality.
If you’d like to know about cremation services in Camillus, NY, our compassionate and experienced team at Bagozzi Twins Funeral Home, Inc. is here to help. You can visit us at our funeral home at 2601 Milton Ave., Solvay, NY 13209, or you can call us today at (315) 468-2431.
