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Summary
This episode of CareLab features Emilia Bourland, Brandy Archie, and guest Helen Bauer discussing various aspects of hospice care, including the importance of rituals in the grieving process, choosing the right hospice provider, and navigating end-of-life decisions. The conversation emphasizes empowering families to advocate for their needs and preferences while navigating healthcare systems. Helen Bauer also introduces her Hospice Navigation Services, a personalized, unbiased guidance platform for families seeking hospice care support.
Key Takeaway
- The Importance of Rituals in Grieving: Funeral traditions, hymns, and family gatherings provide emotional solace and a sense of completion for many, highlighting the value of cultural and personal rituals.
- Choosing the Right Hospice Provider: Families should seek providers aligned with their values by asking questions about decision-making, caregiver roles, and inclusivity in care policies.
- Empowering Patients and Families: Patients and caregivers should actively participate in care decisions, expressing their needs and ensuring healthcare aligns with their values.
- The Role of Hospice Navigation Services: Helen Bauer's service offers unbiased advice to families, helping them understand hospice care options, ask the right questions, and make informed choices.
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Personalized Care at End of Life: Tailoring hospice care to the individual’s and family’s unique preferences creates a meaningful, respectful experience that supports emotional well-being during a challenging time.
Transcript
Emilia Bourland
Hi everyone, welcome to Care Lab.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Welcome to CareLab, it's CareLab Day, I'm so excited to be here with you guys.
Emilia Bourland
Yes, and we have Helen Bauer, nurse and hospice expert extraordinaire back with us again today. We are so excited. We were just saying before we started recording that actually we've taken, we like had a little break from recording. And so this is our first recording in a while and I didn't even know who it was. And then I, that we were recording with first and I saw it was Helen and I was like, yes, Helen's back.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Yes! Reunited!
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
The sisterhood is reunited. I love it.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah. OK, so before we dive in here to talking about hospice and hospice related questions and content, obviously we've got our icebreaker question. And I actually have a hospice, well, maybe not quite hospice, but like an end of life, death and dying question. So I hope everyone's ready for that. OK. So.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
We're not, but go ahead.
Emilia Bourland
yeah, sure. All right. So and as always, Helen, you have to go first and your answer. So.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
That's okay, I'm totally good with a question about hospice and death and dying. I talk about this all the time, so I'm good.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
You
Emilia Bourland
Okay, okay, great. So obviously people grieve in all kinds of different ways and people celebrate the lives of their loved ones who have passed in all kinds of different ways. There's no right, there's no wrong. What I'm curious about is there a particular kind of ritual or like something that might happen at a funeral or celebration of life or just something that you and your family do as a tradition.
that you find particularly comforting if you've lost someone. Something that really like just helps you in that moment.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
wow, that's a really good question.
Emilia Bourland
you weren't expecting such a good question. You were thinking I was gonna ask what your favorite color was.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
I'm telling you, I bet we got deep. like that though. Okay. So, so I will tell you that, that, I have, I had a religious upbringing and when my grandmother died, she was, basically co-parenting me with my mom when we were growing up. I found a lot of comfort in the hymns and the scriptures and stuff that we knew when we were kids. But it's interesting that you asked this question because during the pandemic,
We weren't able to practice a lot of that stuff. And I had an aunt that died during the pandemic. Her death was not COVID related, which somehow makes it less. We sort of assign that in our heads these days, but there was no funeral, no gathering of any type. We had talked about meeting somewhere for dinner as a family. We didn't even do that. And there was such a feeling of...
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
a loss of completion. I won't say closure because your grief continues on even if you've had a funeral or a memorial service. But there seemed to be something that wasn't complete because that ritual wasn't there. And now I would say the scriptures and the hymns wouldn't necessarily be my go-to. But at the time, last significant loss that I had, yeah, those...
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mm-hmm.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
you
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
That ritual inside the church with the familiar prayers and things, that was really comforting. That was meaningful for me.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
I'm going to add to that by saying, I guess in my family and culture, funerals are in churches. There's a church service related to it. We talk about the gospel and that's all really important to me. But the question you asked was what gives you the most like solace or the thing that you take away the most. And I think it's the repast. So this is like after the church service, after the funeral has happened, then we're going to eat.
somewhere, likely in church basement or somebody's house. And there's always a sense of joy for seeing people that you maybe haven't seen in a long time. Slight sadness because maybe we should be only getting together when people pass away. But then also this like, of course, the grief of the person being lost. But then also this feeling of like, like what you said, Helen, about not being closure, but
more like completion in that we mourned, we had a time for mourning together at church. And now we're going to celebrate that this person's life brought all of us together and that they meant something to us. And we're going to have some joy in that. And I find a lot of strength there.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, so I mean, I'm more or less going to piggyback off what the both of you have said, which is probably not surprising to a lot of people. I actually, so I wasn't raised religiously. I'm not a religious person. But I do, on the occasion when I'm in a church for a service or for a funeral or something like that, something, honestly, the group singing.
Like when people are singing a hymn together, I just find it so deeply moving and comforting. And especially in that moment when it just feels like, it just feels like everyone is very connected there in that moment and in their grief and in their joy and in however they're processing it. I find like being in a church where people are singing together to be really deeply comforting.
in those circumstances. then the other one would be, just being together with family. And same as you, Brandi, feeling like there's sadness, but there's also this joy of being together. There's this gratitude for celebrating the person that has passed and the fact that they were in our lives and how they affected us and changed us and things like that. that kind of like group singing, but also
just togetherness with family, think is a really, really important part of the process for me.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Helen, I have a question. I'm wondering, Helen, if you've been a part of or seen in your work in hospice, just like piggybacking out for this question, other cultural or family rituals that you thought were interesting that you hadn't like experienced before that you would bring up.
Emilia Bourland
Okay, that's the episode everyone.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
I don't know that my personal experience has been any different with that. I mean, we're fairly conservative when it comes to funerals and things like that. But I have seen over the last few years, people doing some really cool things with home funerals and differing rituals where a service is really personalized, it's held outside or it's held in a personal space that...
really claims the identity of the person who's died. And so it's a way of honoring in a very intimate messaging, you know, in their home or the home of one of their family members. And it removes a lot of the sterility, right? And we deal with that with deaths, right? Because dying in a home can be very different than dying in a clinical environment. So having a home funeral,
or a green funeral that's held outside. I see a lot of these rituals that have become very meaningful in a very personal way. One of the most amazing things that I see is that for a home, for a green funeral, family members are asked instead of having other pallbearers as we do here in the United States or in the UK, they actually have
people who are hired like funeral staff to carry a casket from whatever transport to wherever the body is going to be buried or placed. To have these family members intentionally carry the casket, I've heard it described as creating a muscle memory that's very meaningful to actually help lay a body or transport, carry a body. And if it's somebody who's having a green burial,
the body is often wrapped in a sheet or a shroud, you know, fabric, and there are flowers placed in, and it's a very intimate thing. But I wonder if maybe that is another one of those things that leads to, again, not closure, but completion. And I also think it creates a memory. It's a death legacy is what I call it. You get to have that piece of things that
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
is memorable and important and has meaning just by participating in that way. I think some of those rituals are really beautiful and people are getting very creative with that stuff. It's really cool to see it.
Emilia Bourland
So I think this is also actually a great segue into another question that I have for you, not necessarily directly related, but earlier we were talking about values. And I think it's so important if we can to have a really good match between the values of the person who is passing or the person who might be on hospice care and the values of the people who are caring for them whenever we can, right? Because we want to create this great
high quality experience for people at end of life. Do you think that there's a way for folks who are sitting here thinking that hospice might be the right call this time? Maybe it's time to call in hospice here. How can they think about making sure that they're working with a hospice provider that has that same set of shared values?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
That is such a big question. It's an important question because not every hospice agency comes to you with the same sort of philosophy. They're all doing the same work, right? Completing the same tasks and their teams are all structured the same way, but they may not approach it with the same compassion and mindset as another agency would. If it's possible,
It's such a luxury to have time to interview somebody from maybe three hospice agencies. Not everybody has time to do that. Sometimes it's an urgent need. You've got somebody who's had an acute event. You had no idea this was going to happen. And you've got to get somebody from hospice out there today to start the care. If you have the luxury of time, talk to two or three agencies. That's what I always recommend. Ask them, you know, what's your philosophy on
decision making, how much does the caregiver weigh in, what kind of care does your chaplain provide, and really dig deep and ask those questions about not just what care they provide, but how it's provided, how do you approach it. I interviewed a woman named Kimberly Aquaviva last year who is in the LGBT key.
the LGBTQ community. She's also a hospice social worker. When her wife was dying, and her wife was also an employee, somebody who worked in end of life care, they tried to find a hospice agency who had a non-discrimination policy that included the gay and lesbian transgender community. And in the area of the United States that they lived in, they could not find an agency.
that actually had a non-discrimination policy that mentioned that. That was very, very important to them. They wanted an agency who would not send employees who would come at them providing their care through a lens of their own personal experience and beliefs, but somebody who would be really respectful of their lives and who they were as individuals, know, her wife's personhood.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
And as a result, they actually didn't use hospice because they couldn't find an agency. And I'm sure that made it very difficult for them. Fortunately, they had a lot of support and could manage it. But if you have the time to ask an agency, do you have a non-discrimination policy? And of course they should, but who does it include? Am I going to be comfortable in your care? And I think maybe that's a good general question to ask. Are we going to be comfortable in these people's care?
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Do you, I guess in relation to that, as a provider yourself, would you feel offended if a family, like if you figured out that the family called you out there but was not necessarily gonna go with you because they were interviewing three different hospice agencies?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
no, I think that happens all the time. I think that happens all the time and it should, it really should. So think about it, if you're gonna hire somebody to put a roof on your house, to replace the roof, you're gonna get two or three bids if you have time to do that, right? It doesn't cost you anything, it costs you some time to meet with somebody here, let them look at your roof and them to work up a bid and say, it's gonna cost this much for me to do this and this with this level of shingle or whatever you wanna go with.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mm-hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Why don't we do that in healthcare? Do you go to two or three PCPs and say, hey, I want to sit down and hear about your philosophy and how you would take care of me? Absolutely not. We don't comparison shop. No, we don't. We look at reviews. But when you're talking about something as intimate and as intense and important as the end of your life, the care that you're going to receive at the end of your life, wouldn't you want to have something that's a really, really good fit?
by interviewing a few people and getting the bid that really works the best for you and is the best fit. I mean, if you get a bid from a roofer who says, we're not gonna start till 11 o'clock in the morning and we'll probably work till 10 o'clock at night, that's not a good fit. They're gonna disrupt your evening and keep you awake at night. You would want somebody who's gonna get up and start at a decent hour in the morning. Well, hospice agencies are the same way. And I think the care
should fit. if you have the luxury, again a lot of people don't, if you have the luxury of talking to people and really choosing, no agency should ever be offended by that.
Emilia Bourland
think that was such a great question and a really important point, know, kind of honing in on this really being about the experience of the person being cared for and their family and not necessarily being concerned about like the professionals, sort of kind of emotional reaction to the thing, which isn't to say like, obviously, we want to treat the people who come into our home
like courteously in respect, you want to be nice to your health care providers, right? But I have so often experienced walking into a patient's home or a patient's room and having them tell me things that maybe they weren't telling other providers and saying like, hey, you know, if this is a concern of yours, you can bring it up with the doctor, you can bring it up with the nurse, you can bring it up with whoever, like it's okay.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mm-hmm.
Emilia Bourland
to say if you have a different need or if you have a concern or you're not satisfied. And so often it's been like, well, I don't want to get anyone in trouble. I don't want to offend anyone. I don't want to make anyone mad. And I think it's partly because people feel like they are at the mercy of their health care providers, right? is not how we, it's not how anyone should feel. Like we're there for you, not the other way around. know, so being.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Right.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Yes, yes.
Emilia Bourland
Being encouraged and feeling like you have the freedom to speak up, ask for what you want, it doesn't mean everything's gonna always go perfectly and exactly the way that we want it to go. But unless you say what you want, there's almost no way that you're gonna get it. And a good provider is never gonna be offended by you saying, have this need that's not being met. They're gonna work with you to figure out how to get it done.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Right. There's a whole set. There's a list of patients rights that lets you know here are these safety nets that you can use to ensure that you get the care. This is what it's supposed to look like. You're supposed to be able to make a complaint. I have had an elderly couple that were dissatisfied with their hospice care and I said, did you, do you want to make a complaint? And they said, no, we're afraid we'll lose our Medicare insurance if we make a complaint.
which of course is not true, but they were truly victimized by this. They felt stuck with a provider that had not given them good care, and they didn't feel like they had any choices or rights in this situation. And that's a terrible thing.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Yeah, there's like two levels of, there's two dynamics that are happening in healthcare in general, right? One is that often we don't have the luxury of time. You know, if you're in an accident and you need healthcare, you're going to go to the closest place, right? Even if the closest place is not a level one trauma center, that's going to serve your need particularly. You go to the closest place and we don't do research. And that's understandable. But the other thing is that there's a power dynamic often that people feel like their healthcare providers are
smarter than them and know the best thing at all times for them and they should just follow what they should do. And while the term doctor literally means expert in whatever they're a doctor in, it does not make them an expert in you or your family or what you need. It just makes them an expert in their thing. Like I'm an expert at occupational therapy, but applying that to your life, we got to do that together. And so it's really important that people listening recognize that your
Voice is important for the effective level of healthcare that you receive at all levels. And it doesn't have to be like a Karen effect, for example. Like you said, they didn't want to make a complaint. Maybe it's not even about making a complaint or waiting until you need to file a formal complaint. It's more about just like being an active participant in the care plan development and not just saying yes and okay to everything I might say as a healthcare professional and that you're just actually putting your input in so that
I can be like, oh, I didn't understand that that was important to you, no problem. Let's make sure we work that in. So now we're having like a collaborative healthcare model as opposed to like, you say yes to everything even though you don't like it and now you're fed up or something bad happened and now you do need to make a complaint. So I just want people to feel empowered to know that they are central to the healthcare. It should not be, I should say, a top-down approach.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Now, the way I describe it is, it's like a football team, but your doctor is the quarterback. The coach is the patient or the decision maker. They're in charge of the whole thing. And then you've got this team out there, the quarterback is the doctor, but there's a relationship there that should be based on mutual respect. The doctor's the expert in the type of care. The patient or the decision maker is the expert in the person who's receiving the care.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
And unless there is a willingness to listen to both sides, because you have to take responsibility where it comes. Healthcare people aren't always great at listening. We know better, so we want you to do what we want you to do. And people are not always willing to take healthcare guidance. A lot of times we'll come in and we'll seek treatment, but then we're completely quote unquote non-compliant. We're not going to do what the doctor's offering.
Yeah, and I mean, I've done that in my own personal health choices. We've all done it. We've all done it, right? And nurses are notorious for this kind of stuff. know, every good hospice nurse that's out in the field, actually probably every discipline, we are the people that are seeing patients. We're eating junk food in the car, talking on the phone at the same time, you know, maybe smoking a cigarette in between. We are notorious for bad health habits, but I think there should be
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Yeah.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Ha ha!
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
a respect of each other's roles and abilities that makes this work better collaboratively, I can get that word out, because the patient and their caregiver or their caregivers are part of the team. We talk about an interdisciplinary team in hospice. That includes the patient and the caregiver. They are the center of everything that we do.
Emilia Bourland
So obviously, this can be a lot for a family or an individual to try to figure out on their own, and especially if time is of the essence, that can be even more difficult. And so navigating that is a really, really big challenge for a lot of people. I understand that people can now maybe contact you directly to help get
Get some assistance with that navigation service. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Sure. Last year, I launched Hospice Navigation Services and it's a remote service, either done by phone or by video, excuse me, to provide people with information and space to ask questions about hospice. A lot of folks who are undergoing treatment for a serious illness are hesitant to talk to their physician or their care team about end of life care or hospice care.
because they're concerned that their treatment decisions by the team, what's offered to them might be watered down or changed because there's an assumption that maybe the patient is ready to stop or doesn't want to be as aggressive. So they need a neutral party or an unbiased party to talk to and ask those questions. And that's what I provide on navigation services. It's somebody to talk to who as an expert, I shouldn't say that about myself,
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mm-hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
feels arrogant, but somebody who has a lot of experience.
Emilia Bourland
No, well, I'll say it. are an expert. You've been doing this. How long have you been a hospice nurse, Helen? Over, okay. And how long have you been hosting Heart of Hospice?
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
You're an expert!
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Over 15 years.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Oh man, we start season 10 in August of 2025. We have over 550 episodes now. So a while.
Emilia Bourland
Like you have been absolutely immersed in hospice, in learning about hospice, in educating other people about hospice for, I mean, forever. So I'm going to go ahead and give you, yes, you are an expert. Yeah. You are an expert. Yeah.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
You
I think so. I think you can say that. Yes.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
I can say expert.
Well, I'm an unbiased expert because I'm not connected to a hospice agency. So the realities of the hospice world is it's competitive, it's an industry. And if you go to talk to two or three or they send representatives to talk to you from two or three different hospice agencies, you're getting a sales pitch. You're getting a sales pitch. Sometimes the performance...
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mm-hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
of those people that come to talk to you, these marketers or community educators, whatever title they might have, is attached to a point system. So there is a monetary reward that comes to those folks if a patient comes on to the service of that agency. I'm not sure that all agencies do that, but that is a widespread practice throughout the industry. So they have skin in the game. The thing about having a navigation call with me is I'm not selling a hospice agency to you.
I'm selling information to you that you can use to make an informed choice so you get the care that's the best fit for you. I want people to have a great hospice experience. I cringe every time I hear somebody say, we had hospice for my mom, grandmother, hospice brother, it was husband, brother, and it was horrible. It grieves me to hear stuff like that because this is a memory, that's their death legacy.
That's what they get to carry forward. And nobody should have that. So a navigation service provides you with unbiased information. I can answer questions. I'll even troubleshoot the care that you're already getting if you're not sure it's a good fit and you want to question whether this should be happening. I'm happy to talk about things like that as well. I don't do legal or clinical advice. I don't provide, you know, nursing advice, any sort of medical information, no legal or billing advice.
no guidance like that, but definitely personalized and very respectful. I understand that every person that I'm talking to is not coming to me because they want to make a grocery order. They're not booking a nail appointment. These are people who are talking about either themselves and the care they're receiving or someone that they care about deeply.
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
their goal is to make sure that they get the best. And so that's why I started the navigation services so people could have access to service where they can ask those questions and feel safe doing it.
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
I think the value of having an unbiased expert help in situations is like really important in the way our healthcare system is set up and also really meaningful for families because while I'm a person who is a tech founder and I appreciate what technology can do for us, there's still no substitute for human connection, especially at a stressful time in which somebody's coming close to end of life.
And so would it be true that maybe somebody is interested in interviewing a few hospice agencies and if they were working with you, you'd help them understand what questions they should be asking or be a part of the hospice interviews and help them decide? Are those some of the kinds of things that you would do?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Absolutely, absolutely. So my tech is fairly low. You can book a video call with me and I'm happy to do that. We can do a group call if you've got several people in your family that want to hear the same message. And I think that's important because if you're going to have two or three caregivers that are involved in decision making or care, it's really great to get everybody aligned with the same information from the starting gate. I think that's important. Or I can do a phone call.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
which is super easy, everybody's able to do that. You don't have to worry about having a video chat. You don't have to figure that out. I think the ability to sit down in a group, I'll be in a small group, even one-on-one, is an advantage because you can Google end-of-life care and you're gonna get 100 different things. The first thing you're gonna get is an ad for an agency.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mm-hmm.
Emilia Bourland
gonna say and most of it's gonna be like sponsored or promotional related and so there's always a point of view on that that's trying to get you to do something but the the benefit of talking with you Helen is like you don't have any of that skin in the game you can just be honest with people and and give them the best information available.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Yes.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Yeah.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Absolutely.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mm-hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Right.
Yeah, and if they're just starting and looking for information, I can sit down and say, okay, so let's talk about what you want to ask an agency or an agency representative about the care they're providing. And I also get a little bit of information about the person, what their diagnosis is. So it's easy to sort of focus in on what their needs might be. And that way I can tell you, okay, here, if you're going to hospice shop,
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Yeah.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Here's some things you might wanna ask. And here are the answers you might wanna look for so you know that A, you're getting good care and B, it's a good fit for what you guys want.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
And that also sounds like one of the other value adds there is that instead of it, you just being a person who's used hospice in the past and has gone through this pathway before somebody else and can help guide them through, which is valuable, you're also getting a healthcare professional who understands the diagnosis that we're dealing with and what that level of life expectancy or things we should expect might happen over time to help have the most informed decision making possible.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Well, and I never underestimate the personal impact of this because even though I've been in hospice for a long time, I have also been a personal caregiver and a medical decision maker for a friend. My father-in-law died in hospice care during the pandemic. And a few years before that, I was the medical power of attorney for a friend of mine who had no children and no family. And she was on hospice. I made that decision. I signed those papers.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
I understand the impact of that. And what I learned was you can have book knowledge and professional experience, but when you go through it yourself, it impacts you deeply and gives you a different understanding of the experience. And I think it creates a more expansive empathy.
for what people are going through. You never really truly understand someone else's perspective or experience unless you go through it yourself. I can't say I understand what it would be like for Amelia to have a child with cancer because I have never had that. I can empathize, but until you go through it...
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Yeah.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
It would be better if we could, right? If I could truly empathize without having to go through it. But I think it does change your perspective and it adds value to what we as healthcare professionals do when we experience it professionally. I understand those decisions. I've signed a DNR. I have had so many patients' families that signed DNR forms. I'm in the state of Texas, it's a one-page form. And it's probably the simplest form we have in healthcare, right? Because healthcare is...
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Yes.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
cares all about the forms. But to sign away that particular treatment is a one-page form here in Texas. I've helped families sign hundreds of those. When I signed one for my friend with a hospice representative that I knew and had worked with, I cried. I knew exactly what it meant, and I felt the grief and the burden of making that decision for my friend.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
It changes you.
Emilia Bourland
So if someone wanted to speak with you or work with you, what would be the best way for them to find you and get in contact?
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
The best way to connect with me and book a Hospice Navigation session is to go to theheartofhospice.com or they can Google Hospice Navigation Services. It's all gonna take them to the same place. There's a way to book a complimentary 30 minute session if they want to do that just to get started. And there's also a paid one hour session and each person is asked to fill out just a very brief questionnaire.
so that when we get to the call, we don't waste their time asking a bunch of demographic information. We don't go deep into health history. We are not dealing with HIPAA issues. We don't gather the full name, any medical or insurance information, because this is all about having a conversation about this person, not about a patient with a health history. So it's super easy to book. I also have an email if they...
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Mm-hmm.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
We're concerned about booking through the system. It's Helen at theheartofhospice.com. I answer all my emails that way and I love doing this work. It's something that all hospice nurses do. You know, get those calls. My sister's gynecologist, friend's hair stylist is being told that her husband needs hospice. We've all done it. And so I've been doing these navigation sessions, you know, standing in my backyard on my telephone.
So it's something I enjoy doing and I think it's got a lot of value. Easy to book, easy to access.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, absolutely.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Helen, thank you for the work that you do and thank you so much for sharing your knowledge on CareLab and for the CareLab listeners. So thank you for being on.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
it's my pleasure. It's always great to be with you guys.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, we appreciate you being here. And I hope to have you back again, because we just like hanging out with you. And also, of course, you just have this incredible wealth of knowledge around hospice and hospice care. I'm very excited for you, by the way, that you have started the Hospice Navigation Services, because I know that you are helping people in a really, truly deep and meaningful way. So thank you so much for your work and what you do.
Helen Bauer, BSN RN CHPN
Thank you. It's always great to be with you guys. I love coming to talk with you.
Emilia Bourland
Well, listener, if you made it to the end of this episode, then please make sure that you check out more of our episodes, download them, leave a comment, leave a review. We would love to get a guest or answer a question that is specific for you. So make sure that you do that. And also, don't forget to like and share. All of these things help to make it so more people can more easily find CareLab and get access to this really, really unique and valuable content that we're putting out there. Until next time, though, we'll see you right here on Care Lab. Bye.
Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L
Bye everybody.
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