Things You Need to Know About Hospice Nurse
Dec 4, 2014 | 9:00 am
A hospice nurse will perform many traditional nursing tasks such as assessing, observing, recording, and working closely with doctors, administering medicines and providing emotional support. A hospice nurse has a particularly hard job because from the onset of seeing a patient they know that the patient they will care for is terminally ill. Their job is to make and keep that patient as comfortable and pain free as possible in their final weeks or days. It requires in exceptional temperament with great compassion and caring, patience and resolve. A hospice nurse will work closely with other hospice team members to ensure that the patient and family members are supported and comforted in their time of need.
Questions
On Nurse Zone in an article titled, A Day in the Life of a Hospice Nurse, Yvonne Mabery, RN works with San Diego Hospice and says, “No two days are ever alike.” Sometime a hospice nurse will arrange for the Chaplain to come in and talk with the patient and family members about their spiritual issues and concerns or just to simply pray with them. Yvonne states, “We do what we need to do, even if it takes hours.”
Making the call to hospice is difficult, but once done, the patients and their families quickly realize the value of a whole team of professionals, including social workers, health aides, doctors, nurses and chaplains there to help and support them and their needs, answer all their questions and comfort them in the final days. In Lady’s Home Journal
, in an article titled “It Doesn’t Have to be Sad; The Life of a Hospice Nurse,” Jill Campbell, RN who does her job with grace, compassion and gratitude says, “I don’t know of another position where you can do more for people. There’s still happiness in the sadness of it.”
It takes an exceptionally skilled and caring nurse to tend to hospice patients. When hospice is required, many people see it as just giving up, but others are glad to have the help and support. Terminally ill patients are mostly cancer patients and with cancer come a lot pain and suffering. Having a team of medical professionals to help you with the pain and comfort while allowing a loved one to pass with dignity in their own home is priceless to most. People don’t want to die in a hospital. They want to die surrounded by the people they love in the homes they raised their families in.
Salary
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a hospice nurse will make about $65,000 per year and they are licensed and certified registered nurses. Some of them have more experience working in Intensive Care Units or Emergency Care or even Oncology, but the pay is stated to be about the same.
A hospice nurse is not for everyone. It takes a very special nurse to care for the terminally ill in their final days. Some will say that the hardest cases are those with children and the younger they are, the harder it tugs at the heartstrings. That being said, they also say they would not change a thing and they love what they do.