Hospice social work is a complex and specialized branch of the medical field. Social workers in this area have unique skills, roles, and techniques that are often overlooked or underestimated. This book is a celebration and an educational opportunity for those interested in Hospice social work. It is a lighthearted, realistic, and a personal account of techniques, experiences, and opportunities for growth in this specialized profession. This book gives a realistic, yet lighthearted look at the vast and unexpected turns this work can take, and along the way shows the growth and lessons the author has experienced in her years of working in this field. Her tips, suggestions and techniques are down to earth and easy to understand, and you will find them helpful not only in the Hospice field, but in your personal life as well. The information shared in this book is heartwarming and easy to apply, and something you will not want to put down!

The first text to explore the history, characteristics, and challenges of hospice social work, this volume weaves leading research into an underlying framework for practice and care. A longtime practitioner, Dona J. Reese describes the hospice social work role in assessment and intervention with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and the community, while honestly confronting the personal and professional difficulties of such life-changing work. She introduces a well-tested model of psychosocial and spiritual variables that predict hospice client outcomes, and she advances a social work assessment tool to document their occurrence. Operating at the center of national leaders' coordinated efforts to develop and advance professional organizations and guidelines for end-of-life care, Reese reaches out with support and practice information, helping social workers understand their significance in treating the whole person, contributing to the cultural competence of hospice settings, and claiming a definitive place within the hospice team.

Accessible and instructive, Palliative Care guides and inspires health social workers to integrate palliative care principles into their current clinical practice. Through the lenses of environmental theory and intersectionality, rich case narratives and diverse practice settings highlightopportunities for social workers to enhance their work, thereby advancing whole-person care in the face of serious illness. The volume also models engagement, assessment, and intervention through key palliative care skills and language. Chapters include questions to concretize ideas and demonstratereal-world application, while case narratives cover a range of settings, diagnoses, and populations. This book is a useful tool for any social worker working with individuals and families navigating complex health care systems.

I've only met Evelyn Amdur through the pages of this book. She seems like a character from the old days, when people connected personally, with genuine care and love. She knew, intuitively, what others needed to hear, understanding their moral dilemmas. A multi-talented and gifted being, perhaps what stands out most for me was her genius at common sense. Particularly at the end of our lives, she's what we wish for and rarely receive. This is a book for social workers, to be sure, but beyond that, for all of us. Most of all, it is a message from a remarkable woman on how to face our final days, and also how to care for those who walk that road before us. - Ondrea LevineEvelyn Amdur became a hospice social worker at the age of sixty-one, a job she continued until one month before her death at age eighty-two. She began to write these stories midway through her career, collaborating with her daughter, Shelley, a respected teacher of meditation in the Chicago area. Many traditional cultures have a custom of 'death songs, ' which rest on the idea that at one's last moment, one somehow sums up the essence of one's life in a phrase or a song. These are truly American death songs. Unlike the austere poetry of the Japanese, which catch the evanescence of life in an image, both beautiful and stark, or the glorious courage of the warriors of the Great Plains, summing up their lives up in a final burst of ecstatic joy, here in language almost artless, in the simplicity of lives much like our own, a dignity rises, one common hero after another. Woven into these stories are instructions on how to die well-or at least, as well as we can-not only in what spirit we face death itself, but also through instructions on what is necessary to prepare our families, to ready our estates, and to manage all the players who may be involved in our deaths. Finally, these stories also teach others who hold the same responsibilities that Evelyn herself had, be they social services, medical staff, caregivers or families-how to offer the dying as much grace as she did

HONEST ENDINGSDo You Have Worries or Fears about Witnessing the End of Life?Gain Freedom from your Anxieties and Fears about the Natural Dying Process Know what You Can Say or Do to Comfort the Dying Be Better Prepared for Attending a Death of a Loved OneWatching a Loved One Die is not Easy. It is Very Difficult.The good news is this: attending a death is a very special form of intimacy, an enormous act of love and caring.No one is better able than you to provide comfort care to your loved one. You will never regret being there.Enter into the World of Hospice: Mysterious and ChallengingExperience moving stories of others going through the same process. Grow in your own confidence as a caregiver as Kathy Cullen shares her journey as she learns to counsel the dying. Quickly enhance your natural skills as a caregiver.Realize that you can do it too..A Memoir for the Current TimesKathy faces her anxieties about death with courage, never shortchanging those who depend on her for strength, support, and emotional comfort. This challenging time in her life leads her on a spiritual journey, finding comfort and peace at long last.You will find it an easy and interesting book, touching and helpful.This is a quick read full of heartwarming stories.

The Dying Process - A Hospice Social Worker's Perspective On End Of Life Care provides a detailed exploration of issues pertaining to patient and family grief reactions, closure support needs, understanding pain, pain management and avenues to create a positive death experience.