Continuing to serve during a pandemic

Story Submitted by Big Bend Hospice

Big Bend Hospice (BBH) reflects on the challenges, uncertainties and significant changes faced this year as they recognize National Hospice Month this November. Even with the COVID-19 pandemic, the area’s “Hometown Hospice” continues to help neighbors know that there is an option when there is no cure.

BBH’s nurses and aides have remained in the field caring for their patients and continue to make visits each week. The nurses help prevent and relieve pain and other symptoms while staying as safe as possible following CDC guidelines for themselves and those they serve.

Hospice aides provide an indispensable service, perhaps now more than ever, by assisting caregivers who feel ever more isolated and alone due to COVID-19. In addition to assisting with personal care, which includes bathing and shaving; they teach caregivers how to change bed linens and dress a patient who is bed-bound. Aides also demonstrate how to carefully turn a patient to prevent bedsores and provide a compassionate level of care. In some cases, the aide may be the only person a patient or caregiver sees or talks to all day and that is an important point to remember.

In the midst of this crisis, BBH’s social workers, music therapists and spiritual counselors found new, creative and effective ways to provide patient care through the end of life. Telehealth was introduced as an innovative alternative to an in-person visit when patient families wanted to limit the number of visitors to their homes. Window-visits have become a safe way to meet face-to-face for those wishing to have some form of safe human interaction. COVID-19 has not prevented staff from working with patients on their holistic and therapeutic goals such as pain management and coping with spiritual matters that often arise during a terminal illness.

The pandemic caused BBH to consider and reimagine the services provided by its network of trained volunteers – a support system of roughly 250 people. All while finding ways to stay safe and remain engaged, some volunteers began a letter writing campaign to patients’ families by sending notes of love and hope to wherever the patient calls home, including hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Other volunteers began collecting personal protective equipment (PPE) for BBH staff or making over 2,000 homemade masks for families and guests to wear which allowed them to continue to visit their loved ones in the Margaret Z. Dozier Hospice House. Volunteers are now assisting with screening guests into the Dozier House and some provide comfort by visiting patients in their homes utilizing safety precautions set forth by the CDC.

Everyone has their own unique physical, emotional and spiritual needs. That has never been more evident than when confronted with a serious illness during a pandemic. BBH staff continues to be on the front-line every single day to give patients the right and freedom to manage their pain and to live their remaining days to the fullest extent possible.

As the nation recognizes November as National Hospice Month, BBH is celebrating 37 years of providing compassionate care in our community. BBH staff continue to provide care through a team-approach that respects the patient’s wishes and seeks to empower the caregiver/family in this most challenging time of COVID-19.

Big Bend Hospice has been serving this community since 1983 with compassionate end-of-life care along with grief and loss counselors available to provide information and support to anyone in Leon, Jefferson, Taylor, Madison, Gadsden, Liberty, Franklin or Wakulla County. If you would like additional information about services, please call (850) 878-5310 or visit bigbendhospice.org.