St. Mary's Hospice Cares For The Entire Family

Although the average stay of most hospice patients hovers at around a month, hospice programs and services for friends and family after the loss of loved one can extend by much longer. The St. Mary’s Hospice system checks in on its patients’ friends and family for thirteen months after their deaths and offers bereavement workshops to give families and friends a place to express their grief.

Bereavement workshops at St. Mary’s are led by Laura Foskey, a licensed Master’s social worker at the St. Mary’s Hospice House. Outside of the bereavement workshops, Foskey does whatever she can to make sure the needs of patients and their families have been met.

“I will attend funerals and final services for families and patients,” said Foskey, “and we just kind of check in on them periodically for thirteen months after the passing of their patient.”

The bereavement workshop consists of eight successive two-hour sessions that build on each other and provide an open forum to discuss loss and grief. The workshop is open to all people whether or not their loved one was a patient through the hospice with St. Mary’s. The workshops generally contain any where from three to twelve people.

“We talk about things like where we are now with our grief, we talk about really normalizing a lot of grief reactions,” said Foskey. “We talk about appropriate and healthy coping. There’s one section about spirituality and how that affects our grief.”

Although the workshop counsels to people in various predicaments, Foskey says that the sense of loss creates a genuine sense of camaraderie among them. Foskey has counseled people who have lost spouses, children or parents.

“Anybody who has experienced a loss is welcome. They still seem to really relate to each other even if their loss may be a little bit different,” she said. “It’s a safe environment for them to really express without any guilt.”

According to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, in 2010, roughly 1.58 million people received care from hospices, with approximately 41.9 percent of deaths occurring under hospice care. However, the statistic that went unrecorded was the number of people who lost a loved one who were helped by hospice workers and programs.

The St. Mary’s Hospice House, which could easily be mistaken for a mountain lodge, offers a peaceful respite for patients as they approach their final moments. Two other programs offered by the Hospice House include a one day holiday bereavement workshop to help people deal with grief during the holidays and Camp Nokose. It usually takes place in the late summer or early fall and caters specifically to children who have lost loved ones.