From the Front Lines: Reflecting on a Career

We are very busy here at HMC celebrating November as National Hospice and Palliative Care Month.  We are being ‘proclaimed’ at local City Council meetings, passing out flyers about hospice care, planning a county-wide Chamber Early Bird breakfast, having our first Coffee & Conversations gathering, planning an in-service on Veterans at the end of life and various other activities!  As I was thinking about everything that has to be done this month, I reflected back on my 16 years in hospice care.  Let me make this clear…..I NEVER planned to be a hospice nurse.  When I was in nursing school, I all I ever wanted to do was deliver babies.  I did spend the first 18 years of my career in Women’s and Children’s Services (loved it!) and by no choice of my own, I found myself in Home Health and Hospice care (didn’t love it!). 

But what I now realize is that while my time delivering babies, teaching childbirth classes and generally promoting women’s health was wonderful—I was being prepared to continue my ministry of work in hospice care.  I found a love for hospice that I didn’t know was in my heart.  As I talk to other hospice nurses at Hospice of Marshall County and other agencies, I find there are many of us ‘former OB nurses’ now providing care at the other end of the age spectrum.  Surprisingly, there are many similarities in my practice now as with OB care even though I am not directly involved with day-to-day direct patient care.  There’s a saying I believe is very true and it is this, “When a baby is born, the baby cries and everyone else rejoices, and when someone dies, that person rejoices and everyone else cries.”   How true that saying is, especially if that someone has made preparations for their life after this one.  In care of women and children, I provided care to some of the most vulnerable in our society –  the mother and newborn babe. In hospice care I am also providing care to another vulnerable group in our society – the very ill and their family.  

In the years I have been involved with hospice care, I have seen many changes.  No longer are we just caring for elderly families with great extended family and church support.  The families we serve now many times have extremely complicated issues that tax our limited resources and require us to be creative in seeking assistance from the community.  Reimbursement cuts and ever increasing regulatory scrutiny cause us to have ‘one of those days’ almost daily!  Still I will say, this is the hardest job I’ve ever loved and I am continually encouraged to see how every member of our team puts their own heart and soul into what we do.

Hospice professionals everywhere, I salute you! 


--Susan Sanders, RNC, BSN