How Hospice Social Workers Make Everyday Moments That Matter

By Chris Gooding, LCSW-C, Social Worker

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How Hospice Social Workers Make Everyday Moments That Matter

There are many moving stories about how a hospice social worker helped a patient get married or take that one last trip to the ocean. These are impactful, memory-making moments that go a long way to honor the patient’s final wishes while helping a family heal after their gone.

But I’m not going to share those kinds of moments.

I’m going to share moments like helping the patient make a phone call to an estranged family member — or giving them permission to NOT make that phone call. Counseling a daughter whose mother no longer knows who she is due to dementia. These are moments that matter, everyday moments, that are nurtured by a hospice social worker.

Families can be messy. For many, making moments that matter means reconciling grudges or misunderstandings. A social worker might start some conversations with the patient to explore the history of the rift and what the difficulties are. Then, there can be a family meeting where the social worker is a third-party intermediary to guide a talk about giving or asking forgiveness.

The moment that matters here is to give all involved healing before the patient dies and they’ve lost the opportunity. For the patient, this unfinished business could cause extra stress at the end of their life, leaving behind unresolved issues.

Sometimes a patient is not able or willing to reconcile. Then social workers become a support for the family to help them find in some other way the peace they hoped would happen before their person died.  

Memory making moments like going to an Orioles game or making a big birthday party happen can be a challenge for social workers that leads to an important moment for everyone. But I’m also helping to make moments that matter each time that I am with a patient who shares how great it is to watch Jeopardy with their family or asks to help them call a long lost relative to say, “I’m sorry.”

Some moments that matter are even simpler. A family asked that I visit their father every week, which I did for three months while he was in our care. On a few visits I had to complete about five minutes of paperwork. The rest of the time was just being there. To listen. To talk. Each week I knew I made a difference. Each week I knew I had made moments that mattered.