The Brooklyn West VNSNY Hospice Team: ‘We’re All in This Together!’

With the large number of patients dying from COVID-19 in New York City and community resources stretched thin by the coronavirus pandemic, the teamwork at the heart of interdisciplinary hospice care has never been more important. For VNSNY’s close-knit Brooklyn West Hospice Team, this collaborative approach is helping them provide care and comfort to distraught families under even the most difficult circumstances.

When a young woman’s grandmother recently died of COVID-19 and she had to wait for the funeral home to remove the body from the home, VNSNY Hospice Social Worker Carolyn Gartner and Spiritual Care Counselor Anna Jenkins took turns checking in on the granddaughter regularly by telephone to ensure that she didn’t feel alone. Remaining present in this way for families in dire need “can be exhausting,” Carolyn says. “That’s why we work as a team. It’s invaluable.”

This hospice teamwork is essential in order to support patients and their family members effectively, adds Anna. “When we suffer at end of life, we suffer at so many different levels,” she says.

Anna conducts most of her visits jointly with Carolyn. During these visits, which are conducted by telephone these days, she listens to family stories to see where she can offer support. She recently worked with a family who was losing a beloved matriarch—a family that typically fought about everything. Anna managed to find a single point of agreement: that the mother’s meatballs were the world’s best. “When you listen to someone and let them tell you their story, their sacred practices will come out,” she says. “I try to bring spiritual care to an earthly place where every family can connect. God is in those meatballs.”

At the same time Anna provides spiritual care, she marvels at how Carolyn connects families with much-needed resources and support, as well as how VNSNY Hospice Nurse Max Rubinstein delivers physical care with such gentleness and expertise. “Max heals wounds in such a beautiful way, which allows me to stay in my role healing different wounds,” says Anna. As humans, we need physical wound care, spiritual wound care, and the kind of care that Carolyn provides, making sure that no one feels they are dying alone.”

Providing this care is not easy. COVID-19 has stressed resources and upended customs around dying just when people need support the most. Home health aide support, facility-based hospice placement, and funeral homes have all been impacted. “The virus is really upping the ante,” says Carolyn. Still, she plumbs her resources, thinks creatively, and works with each family to arrive at a solution.

When a daughter whose mother was dying found three funeral homes full and unable to accommodate her, she turned to Carolyn, who shared her own list until together they found a home with availability. “Afterwards I texted her, ‘I’m so sorry,’” Carolyn recalls, “and she texted me back, ‘I’m so sorry, too, for the world ❤.’ That really touched me. We’re all in this together, and we’re all trying together.”

Max, who has been with VNSNY Hospice for six months, believes it’s the holistic outlook of hospice and the power of the team that resonate most profoundly with patients and family members. He recently visited a patient to dress wounds, but she and her partner needed much more than that: They needed the television fixed, which Max was able to do. The couple had no photographs together, so Max remedied that too, by taking a picture. Most importantly, they needed human connection.

“I always try to not rush in and out, but to be present,” says Max, noting that Anna and Carolyn called this same couple regularly as well. “When I left, I always reminded them of those upcoming calls, and they were so happy. They told me they never felt alone, because they knew they had a whole team supporting them.”

The VNSNY Hospice team is also a vital support for the clinicians themselves. Anna says her absolute favorite part of the week is the weekly team meeting, where team members share challenges, empathy and support. “People in this group uniquely understand each other,” she says.

“I never feel alone, no matter where I am,” adds Max. “I wish all health care was as interdisciplinary as hospice—especially the way it’s done at VNSNY.”

To read more VNSNY Heroes of 2020 stories, click here.