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Nurses are essential in every healthcare entity. All nurses have a special calling in their lives. We want to recognize all nurses for their daily compassionate and professional care for patients and their families. No doubt about it, without nurses’ courage, professionalism, skill, and expertise, our healthcare system could not function.

However, today, I will focus on nurses working in hospice. Hospice nurses recognize that healing comes in different forms. Sometimes there are physical healings where miracles happen, and patients are healed of their diseases. Other times God gives patients and families peace, as they know God will soon be welcoming His beloved home. A nurse considers it an honor to offer care and compassion to those they serve.

For the most part, hospice nurses provide care in the individual home but can also offer care in a nursing home or an assisted living facility. I’ve often heard our nurses called “angels” by the patients and families they have cared for, thus letting us know how important this job is, and what a meaningful impact this work can have on others.

Hospice administers palliative care, focusing on comfort, pain control, and symptom management.

Hospice’s focus is on caring for the patient when a patient’s disease has advanced to the point where all curative treatments have been exhausted and when the patient will not benefit from further testing and procedures. Hospice not only provides palliative care for the patient but also seeks to enhance the quality of life for family members by providing social, physical, emotional, spiritual, and practical care services and education. Together with the patient’s physician and hospice interdisciplinary team – hospice nurses take care of the medical details, thus allowing the patient and their family to focus on the patient, not the disease.

Until the time comes when our world has found a cure for all diseases and illnesses, our nurses and staff will continue to provide excellent end-of-life care for those we are honored to serve.

“Our home in Heaven was never designed by God to be our last option but rather our intended destination.” Author Unknown

— Vickie C. Wacaster is a Patient and Hospice Advocate with Aveanna Hospice (formerly Comfort Care Hospice).