Something to Think About

New hospice nurses often ask me what matters most. It isn't medications or procedures. Hospice nursing is about teaching, guiding, and helping families feel safe as they walk through one...

Those of us who work in end-of-life care walk beside people and families during one of the most intimate times of life. Because of the emotional nature of this work,...

As death approaches, taking a blood pressure is one more unnecessary intrusion for the patient and for the family. Will what you learn affect anything?

Healing is not just about the physical body. We are mental and emotional beings that have a physical body.

It is hard to comprehend that our special person will die no matter what we do. No matter how many treatments, how much medicine, or how much food we give,...

Today most hospices have some sort of a hospice house arrangement. It may be in a designated portion of a nursing facility or in a free standing building of its...

Working with end of life all these years has shown me how special each day is. It has also shown me the value and the gift of living, doing, and...

That weekend I sat  on my sofa with a yellow legal pad (before computers) and wrote what I wanted families and caregivers to know about the natural dying process. I...

 90% of end of life care is education. People don’t die like they do in the movies, yet movies are our current role models. This leads to unrealistic expectations...

In the hours to minutes before death, gather family and significant others. Encourage each person to spend some time alone with the person dying. This is the time to talk...

Families are stressed and frightened and by the time they finally reach out for hospice services, they have already wanted and needed them for days if not weeks.

As end of life approaches, people start looking at their life; what they’ve accomplished, not done, who they have touched, interacted with, and the relationships they have or have not built...

All the hours of talking, drinking coffee, and eating homemade pies was time spent healing, building trust, and educating. It wasn’t about blood pressures. It was about people, feelings, and...

People don’t die like they do in the movies. Mom is not going not going to say some profound words, close her eyes and be dead...

Taking care of someone who is at the end of life is different from taking care of someone who is going to get better, BUT most people don’t know this—-including...

How do we get beyond the social conventions of strangers meeting and getting to know and trust each other in a very short time? From the time we ring the...

My husband Jack  has been dead eight months. In processing the five months from his diagnosis to his death, what stands out most for me is the tension that surrounded food....

Working with end of life in the medical field often leaves us feeling like outliers. The medical model is to fix people. Working with dying generally isn’t addressed in training. (It’s...

Once we get up the courage to call hospice, we want to see you immediately.  Actually, we needed to see you, hear your guidance and advice, and receive your services yesterday. Families...

Grief is like an open wound. When we healthcare workers experience a personal loss, every patient scrapes open our own wound of personal grief.  

I knew all the signs of approaching death, of labor beginning. What I didn’t know was how much we don’t want to see those signs, and by not wanting to see them,...