Interest in hospice

Hey Kara!

Was working on a cardiac step down unit and took a pool position with a hospice organization. Fell in love as I suspected and the rest is history! Good luck in your search, hospice is incredibly rewarding!

I was a new grad when I started in hospice. My background prior to that was 10 yrs as an emergency & critical care veterinary technician. Turned out the manager was an animal lover. Not the typical way to get a start in a specialty, but it proves you should apply to everything and anything even if you don't match the desired qualifications because you never know what kind of connection you may make with the interviewing manager.

rrobinson, this is encouraging to read, because I really want to be a hospice nurse once I graduate but I was told that you need one to two years of acute care experience. When did you get this hospice job? Thanks in advance.

Most hospice hiring managers look for nurses who have experience with assessment and the nursing process when seeking to fill field case management positions. That field work is VERY autonomous and is a rough place for a new grad to start and be successful without burning out.

So, demonstration of critical thinking is very important and it really doesn't matter what the area of specialty was. The nursing process will translate from one specialty to another, as will other technical skills. The hospice field nurse must be able to think on his/her feet, act independently, and advocate for the patient goals with out the immediate support of another professional.

Good luck.

I am wanting to work in hospice/palliative care at my hospital. I've wanted to make this switch from critical for quite a while but my husband became ill with liver cancer and he died 4 months ago. So things hit to close to home and dealing with this is certainly an experience I wouldn't wish for anyone. I talked with our hospice MD she said that it was too soon after the death of my husband. She told me to wait at least a year and to keep up with what our hospital is offering as far as seminars and inservices.

The issue for me that I run into is with the baby docs (interns, 1st year residents). They can't grasp the difference between the two or will not order a consult. One doctor told me that her patient didn't need hospice because he was up and ambulating. I told her that my husband was able to ambulate up to the evening he became comatose and died. The docs are so young and don't understand. So we have to educate them.

I did a year in cardiac stepdown and two years in cardiac ICU before becoming a hospice nurse, which I just did on September 17 of this year. I LOVE it, but it is HARD work -- mostly the charting side of it. Home patients and their families can be draining but rewarding all at the same time. I always wanted to do hospice -- so far the absolute hardest/worst thing about it for me is working five days a week! Seriously. I TOTALLY miss my three day, three 12 hour night shift work week. Sigh. Wish I could do 12 hour night shifts in hospice. The weekends are WAY too fast. I imagine I'll like being off on the holidays, though. :-) Good luck with your exploration!