Healthy Body

Weekly Strength

June 28, 2010

Perhaps you have felt like the RN who used to do Hospice/Home Health Care on call. She told me that the hardest part was going in the middle of the night to a home to people she had never met. “The pt had died & I didn't know them.”

 After listening I suggested,

Perhaps we might re-frame that: Hospice/Home Health Care is like a Healthy body; some of us are the hands, some are the feet. Already, sister, I perceive that you have the heart and the hands but you say you’ve never laid eyes on them before. Realize, however, other members of the team have seen and touched them before you!

 

In the dark hour that night you brought your heart and hands and tears to them - you served them. Yes, you felt unsure, but you were there! You cared. You delivered heartfelt capable care. You were an extension of those who have seen and cared for them before.

 

Day after day, night after night, that is what it is like when our team [e.g. Hospice] delivers care as a healthy functioning body.

 

 

Many of us provide direct contact, frequently at the front line.

A number of us touch the patients and families only on rare occasions.

Some of us provide support to those who are up front yet without client contact.

 

All of us combined make a healthy body delivering heartfelt capable care through hands, feet, heart, tears – every component of our being.

  – Chaplain Robin