The highest priority of social work routine visits in hospice

The care that patients receive from hospice has a beginning, a middle and an end.

At the start of care, we initiate a relationship. As the end approaches, the family will need support. How supportive we can be depends on the quality of relationship we develop. Every important thing a social worker can do for a hospice family depends on the quality of the relationship.

There is plenty for us to pay attention to during our routine visits, but developing and maintaining relationships is one of the most important reasons to make visits frequently. When the relationship is strong, everything challenging topic will become easier to work with. A patient’s son who refuses at the start of care to talk about a DNR or funeral home plan is far more likely to engage these topics with you when you’ve shown him over a few routine visits that you are reliable, trustworthy and nonjudgmental. If you believe you need to have a conversation about alternative living arrangements (a.k.a., mom going to a nursing home), the conversation will go much better when there’s a deep rapport.

Connecting: the real “why” for frequent routine visits

So that’s the real why: building the connection. That’s why one routine visit per month is never enough for communicative patients or family members who make themselves available. It’s the real reason to keep calling the semi-absent MPOA when visiting the non-verbal. It’s why we maintain a frequent presence in their lives even when there doesn’t seem to be a crisis. A crisis may arise, and we are in a much better position to provide crisis support if have already earned their trust.

Establishing a framework for hospice social work routine visits

Accomplishing productive routine visits will be the topic of the next few articles. We’ll look at the boxes to check. We’ll discuss how and when to give advice and coordinate visits with team members. We’ll make visits worthwhile even when it seems there is nothing that can or should be done.

There are many different approaches to routine hospice social work visit, as there are with hospice social work in general. Also like hospice social work, there’s room to start out by winging it while a framework can help make them more productive. Check back Thursday and we’ll start laying out this framework.

My mission and how you can help

My goal is to boost the esteem, confidence and power of hospice social workers. You can help by getting the word out and adding to the discussion. Share your thoughts in a comment. If you disagree, we can raise awareness of a topic with some spirited debate. Share to Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter, or simply let your hospice colleagues know there’s a resource here.

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Thank you, and enjoy!