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Tuesday, May 13
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 Nancy Brewer, RN |
An Intensive Care Nurse Finds Hospice
Originally published in Chicago Hospital News, May 2006
By Maureen McCusker
Nancy Brewer, RN, had been an intensive care nurse for six years when she decided patients and families deserved more options as they battled serious, often fatal illnesses. “We did everything to save a life. Everything,” she says. “But I believe in giving families choices—something generally not possible in intensive care.”
She was researching those options when she found VITAS Innovative Hospice Care® of Chicagoland Northwest. She took some of our concepts back to the intensive care unit, but she ended up joining the VITAS staff. Now when she goes into a hospital, it’s “on a very different side of care,” she says. “And it’s more challenging than I ever expected.”
Intensive care is technically and medically demanding, but it concentrates on a failing body system. “If we concentrate on the heart or the lungs, we’re not thinking about the bowel or wounds,” she says. “VITAS must assure the comfort of every body system, plus the emotional and spiritual needs of the patient and family.”
After six years with VITAS, Nancy knows she makes a difference every day. The notes she receives from families, the words of appreciation from a doctor, are a plus. She is proud of the caliber of care VITAS offers. “We have aides, social workers and chaplains in the hospitals, not just for patients in private homes,” she explains. “And we have a regular routine. Hospitals know what to expect from VITAS. We work as a huge team with their staff, their doctors, the patient and the family. VITAS is an excellent coordinator.”
And Nancy is an excellent communicator. She speaks to hospital staff after every visit. She’ll call the patient’s family if they are not present, or return to the hospital when they are. Sometimes the patient is stable and it is the family that requires most of Nancy’s attention.
She doesn’t see herself as special. “All the nurses and aides in the Lombard program go out of their way to care for patients, on their own time, using their own money for gifts or food, making patients’ wishes happen,” she says. “It’s wonderful how generously we care for our patients—through VITAS, yes, but also through our hearts. And we help each other.
“I marvel that my name was mentioned as an outstanding nurse,” says Nancy Brewer. “You could talk to any one of us, and the story would be the same.
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