Workers Services

In this write-up, I will outline key points my fellow hospice team members and I have observed in our day to day work.. I have worked over 12 years as a Spiritual Counselor in Hospice Care. Every person teaches me something, though it is I who is supposed to minister to them in the final moments. For my colleagues and I, working in hospice is an ongoing challenge and learning experience, that presents us with learning of the deepest kind – on a soul level. In this write-up, I share with you the perspectives of my colleagues and myself, at a Hospice Center in Northern, IN (USA). We work together as a team and here are some of the insights from my colleagues.

Hospice is not a place. It is a concept of care. Hospice staff go to people’s homes and extend care for the mind, body, and soul. Significantly of our work is to free of charge individuals of physical pain, so a patient can be attentive to living until he/she dies. This is a time when numerous patients reflect on their life. This integration occurs naturally and is deeply embedded in the psyche/soul of an individual.

Significantly of the work we do at the end of life is transitional. We are supporting a dying patient as he/she moves into becoming more soul than body. It is a work that challenges and changes anyone who is touched by a individual whom I like to say is “awakening into their most authentic self.”

Our Hospice President wanted me to remind doctors of the will need to have suitable points of referral to Hospice Care. Early referrals allow all the services of Hospice care to become established and integrate holistic care. In addition to physicians, hospice centers are comprised of volunteers, social workers, nurses, bereavement counselors, and spiritual counselors who work to establish care, creating the chance for patients and families to share their deepest concerns.

My co-workers in the social work department wanted me to share the significance of great listening. The patient is dying to every thing he or she has ever known.. As he or she begins to die, they turn out to be extremely reflective, and may possibly want to share their reflections with their caregivers.

Through these reflections, a patient gives meaning to their life. When we listen to a patient share their story, we are being invited into their soul. The tears that surface are symbols of love a person acknowledges and encountered throughout the course of his or her life.

My colleagues in Nursing wanted me to remind healthcare experts to be liberal with medications for pain relief. It is important to give a patient enough medication to keep him or her from being in pain. Hospice Nurses gauge this daily in their patients. The physician/nurse team in palliative care is so essential that 1 can not underestimate the cooperation and excellent communication required between health care team members to do what’s in the greatest interest of the patient.

When a patient’s pain is under control, the capacity to focus on living creates hope in the midst of dying. This capacity to have high quality of life in the midst of dying gives the patient a sense of control that illness takes away. Our capability to create this high quality of life for a dying patient is a wonderful use of our medical capacities in order to bring healing comfort to those who will need it.

The Bereavement Counselors on my team wanted to share with medical experts the importance of taking time to realize and comfort family members, specially those who are care givers of the terminally ill. It is important to the bereavement procedure that doctors and nurses take time to share with the caregivers that their loved 1 is dying.

Watch out for technical medical language – or jargon – when you speak with family members. It is not usually understood, and in reality, has a way of blocking a sense of personal closeness that family members need, in order to fully participate in what their loved 1 is facing.

Intellectual understanding of a patient’s prognosis is important. In addition, a family member also needs to know that their loved 1 is personally cared for until he/she dies. Here, we enter into a realm of care that transcends the body. This is where we care for the souls of all the family members who are involved in a patient’s care. The way we care for the family system of a patient’s life during this point can promote or hinder the bereavement process.

My fellow Spiritual Counselor and I believes that our capacity to be open to a patient’s personal faith is what leads to a sense of peace beyond death. Earlier I talked about the deepening awareness of soul, that dying folks usually experience. In addition, quite a few of our patient’s have religious thoughts of God, as he or she understands God.

A person’s capacity to believe in a higher power that is beyond themselves is a important part of the dying method. Here, a patient moves through merely what he or she has been taught about their Creator to a far more intimate and direct experience of what is beyond concepts, labels, and formal religion.

Dying individuals have much to teach us about living. For several persons, facing the end of their life may well be the initial time they have confronted this topic. For others, it could be something they have thought about intellectually, but now have to confront it by way of experience. Regardless of what path people have taken to reach this point, for most each one, endings turn out to be a time for spiritual awareness.

My very first Hospice patient taught me something I will never forget. She wanted me to sit in silence with her and pray meditatively. Our time together was filled with space: space to feel eternity reach through the dying experience and surround our inner selves with peace. This gave far far more meaning beyond anything she or I could have ever comprehended in purely intellectual terms about dying.

Even to this day, I keep in mind her words: “What matters in life IS NOT matter.” It was her way of telling me that there is far more to life than what we see and touch. And as she neared the end of her life, it was the inner, spiritual aspect of life that was taking on a life of its own.

Regardless of your philosophy, if you are a health care provider who is dealing with the terminally ill, it becomes critical to respect the idea of soul, even if you do not believe in it yourself. By soul, I do not mean something specific to a specific religion. I mean, rather, an awareness that can be experienced among persons of all paths and religions.

As professionals who care for those who are dying, it is important we bear in mind we are caring for a person’s soul and their body.

As component of the process of turning towards non-material things, a person begins to let go of the various roles he/she carried out in life. At such a time, the want to locate meaning and hope beyond this existence becomes important to the well being of a patient who is dying. As caregivers, the want to look by way of our eyes and no longer with them enables us to view our patients as a lot more than a illness in dis-ease. It is here we connect with them soul to soul and forge an eternal relationship with them that will never die.

As a dying patient begins to let go of their personality, an identity with something within him/her begins to emerge. This emergence is a calm awareness that has been with him/her their entire life. It is the component of us not attached to the experiences of the world. It is an identity with an aspect of us that transcends even death itself. In some techniques, this perspective on dying enables the 1 who is dying to awaken into eternal life.

There are many definitions of the word soul. But most everybody agrees that it refers to some thing unseen, and yet we know exists. Inside us is a landscape of the soul. It is the part of us that knows without a doubt that an experience is true with out having a tangible experience of it. This part of us guides us via some of life’s most difficult circumstances. It gives us hope beyond our present circumstances transcending us from self-centered awareness to life-centered awareness. This component of us is the same part a dying person begins to identify with at the end of their life giving them a sense of peace beyond anything he/she has been able to conceive to this point in life.

As the dying person makes their journey towards his or her end, and beyond, he or she is engaging in one of life’s most sacred journey. As the spiritual aspects of a person unfold along this journey, it becomes a chance for other people to learn from them. As a health care provider, you are in a special position, not only to comfort individuals as they make this final journey, but to also learn from and be deepened by your patients.

The spiritual awareness that can develop within you as a result, of the peace that grows in a dying individual can be a lesson that you carry with you, and share not only with other hospice patients, but all of your patients, family and friends.

Sam Oliver, author of, “God a Logs on Living and Dying”