NHPCO NewsLine Summer 2020 - 20

continued

now, people are especially
sensitive to that because they are
not at the bedside. We must
make sure that we are doing our
best to streamline messaging and
whenever possible have some
group meetings with those in the
hospital and at home.
I had a recent call where one of my
nurse practitioner colleagues was in
the hospital and she had called me
about the son of a patient who is
elderly, has a lot of other issues,
and now is COVID-19 positive and
medically struggling. She was not
able to help the son (who cannot
be with his mother) get to the
difficult conversations that were
needed, although she is a very
skilled clinician usually at doing
that. So, I asked my nurse
practitioner in the hospital if we
could we show him his mom first.
Then can we talk together. We set
up a Zoom call and it was, I would
say, as rewarding as if we were
there in person. At the end of the
call, he made the important and
difficult decision to focus on his
mom's comfort rather than
medical care that is not helping her.
It can be helpful to think about or
anticipate some of the issues that
may come up in a call. For example,
sometimes when I video or talk
with folks, I am thinking that we
are going to have a conversation
about emotion or how things are
going or advance care planning.
But the family or significant other
says, "You know what, I'm really
frustrated because nobody has
Face-timed me with my loved one."
I know that I am not going to get

20

Newsline / Summer 2020

This crisis is causing trauma, psychological
harm, and distress like nothing else that
many of us have seen in our lifetime.

anywhere in my conversations with
that person if we do not first
address that issue. So being able
to know your systems, know who's
present, and how to ramp those
things up to get them resolved
quickly earns you some trust, gets
them the messaging that they
need, and helps you move forward.
I think everybody is aware of
what is happening in the areas of
the country that have been
bombarded so heavily by the
COVID-19 crisis, like New York, for
instance. Not only dying has
changed, but grieving has
changed, funerals and that
process is very different. So, in
social work a lot of people are
bringing those things up, long
before somebody dies - whether
it's themselves or somebody else.
It has been important for me to
spend some time calling around
to talk with some of the funeral
directors in the area to get a
sense of what issues are coming
up. What are they dealing with,
what are their practices, who can
do a virtual funeral and who
can't, who is allowing people to
go to a grave site and who is not?
I will do this periodically because

it is going to change, but this is
important for our patients and
the people they love.
One of the things that normally I
do a lot but now find I am doing
more often is help with scripting. I
spoke to a gentleman the other
day who needed help scripting for
his wife, to talk to her about how
sick she was and not knowing
how to bring that up with her. I
spend a lot of time around
scripting for kids and adolescents,
how to explain COVID and what
is happening, how to explain why
we are not going to the hospital,
and not having a funeral.
All of these are things that your
palliative care and hospice social
workers have expertise in and can
support the rest of the team with
that process.
As social workers in this field, our
client base is not just the patient
and the people they love, but our
passion is to also support the
people with whom we work
throughout our hospitals, our
hospices. This crisis is causing
trauma, psychological harm, and
distress like nothing else that many
of us have seen in our lifetime. One
NHPCO NewsLine Summer 2020

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