Dealing with Death: Hospice Workers on Easing the Passing at End of Life

Providing the possibility of that wished-for death is the professional mission of all in this room, of all the 935 employees and 3,000 volunteers who work for the 40-year-old nonprofit Hospice of the Western Reserve. Each day they serve 1,200 hospice patients, most of them in hospitals, nursing homes, or their homes, and as many as 88 in one of three inpatient hospice houses in the Cleveland area, like this one off Lakeshore Boulevard.

By Medicare’s criteria, to receive hospice services, each of those patients is deemed to have six months or less to live. In most cases, they also must agree to forgo curative treatments....“It’s sacred work,” says Lisa Scotese Gallagher, one of whose jobs at Western Reserve is to provide programming to help the staff deal with the stress and emotional intensity of their jobs. “But the expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss and not be touched by it is unrealistic.”

...“Most of death isn’t medical, it’s spiritual and psychological,” he says. Hospice workers know they can’t erase all hurts and resentments. But often they facilitate conversations that can lead to deathbed reconciliations.