Kindness and End of Life
World Kindness Day, celebrated annually on November 13, promotes the importance of being kind to each other, to yourself, and to the world. It is a reminder that compassion for others is what binds us all together.
When working with patients through their end-of-life journey, compassionate guides and partners are vital. Having an experienced team comprised of nurses, aides, social workers, chaplains, bereavement counselors and volunteers can make the journey more comfortable, less frightening, and provide an opportunity to learn how to embrace life while preparing to die. Sprinkle the knowledge and experience that hospice has to offer with a generous amount of kindness and patients and their loved ones will feel sustained during a time of great need.
Hospice kindness involves staff …
- Slowing down and taking time with someone to provide thoughtful listening, and in many cases, merely sitting in silence with the patient.
- Helping patients explore spiritual frustrations, loss of hope, and questions of value, worth, and meaning, and encouraging and assisting in life review, a process that allows patients to understand and affirm that past actions were good and justifiable and that they had worth.
- Providing reassurance to alleviate fears of pain, suffering and loneliness.
- Conversations that lead to an understanding of the person, not simply of the disease.
Homeland Hospice is proud to practice this every day with our hospice patients and their families, ensuring each person in our care is treated with respect and kindness.
