K is for Knowledge and Kindness - ABC's of Inspired Hospice Volunteers

All hospices are not created equal!  I’ve always believed that we volunteer with a good hospice, but now I really and truly know what an incredibly great hospice Inspiration is. 

This last month, a very sick friend in Las Vegas had been sent home from the hospital after being told that there was nothing more they could do for her.  She is alone in the world and was too sick and weak to take care of herself, so I readily volunteered to get hospice set up for her, fully confident that one or two phone calls would have a nurse rushing off to her aid to get her admitted.  Knowing how simple our hospice tries to make it for families in such stressful times, I had no idea of the nightmare this would become! 

First, I’d learned previously from Shar while searching for hospices for my mother-in-law in Pennsylvania, that I wanted a National Hospice and Palliative Care (NHPCO)accredited organization. 

Having located  those online at NHPCO.org, I started making calls, but it was a Sunday morning, so every hospice I reached had an answering service that promised a call back from a hospice representative within a half hour.  If your family member was in crisis, would you like to be relying on a hospice that is using an answering service?   I wouldn’t. 

Inspiration has a nurse and doctor on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

When the Las Vegas hospices finally did return my call, they told me they could get someone out there the next day although I found one who would send a marketer out that afternoon, but for informational purposes only.  

Inspiration will have a nurse out within the hour to do an admit!

By this time I was so frustrated!  Then I learned that they wanted nothing to do with her because she didn’t already have a doctor’s order for hospice.  They don’t want to admit a patient until they are guaranteed they’ll get paid for every bit of effort they put into them.

If Inspiration cannot reach a patient’s doctor because it is a weekend, they will admit the person anyway because they have 48 hours to get the admit.  If the  patient is denied for whatever reason, then Inspiration assumes the costs and calls it a loss!

My friend’s story did not end well.  In the end, the only hospice that would talk to us, insisted she call an ambulance and go back to the hospital before they would admit her.  My sick, stubborn friend was determined to remain in her home and so there was nothing more I could do.  My sister was driving down to be with her and she took it from there, but still couldn’t get her onto hospice, because they said her disease wasn’t considered end-stage. 

Inspiration, in this same situation, would have admitted her for failure to thrive or debility!

My sister took care of her for the next several miserable nights and days, hurting her back and shoulder in the process.   Knowing my sister had to leave soon, the friend was so desperate that she resorted to attempting suicide because she wanted to die at home. That failed and obviously the  friend was  too far beyond what my sister could physically deal with, so she was forced to  call an ambulance and have her admitted back into the hospital.  The friend was extremely upset with the situation.  This story could have been so different if we could have located a truly knowledgeable, kind hospice like ours.

Inspiration Hospice, from the founding principles, to the protocol, to the staff they employ and volunteers they attract, is truly all about knowledge, kindness and compassion.  I think of the poem:

I have wept in the night

For the shortness of sight
That to somebody’s need made me blind;
But I never have yet       
Felt a tinge of regret
For being a little too kind.

^Anonymous

Now THAT’S Inspiration!