Hospice isn’t a scary word with CaringEdge, the home health division of Edgewood Healthcare.

As part of its home health programs, CaringEdge offers hospice services to its clients within a 45-mile radius of the Minot area.

Its goal is to show the community that hospice should not be something scary but a resource that can help people and their loved ones make each day the best it can be.

“Anytime someone hears the word hospice, people cringe and think about death,” said Kristi Sherven, the Hospice Home Care coordinator at CaringEdge. “We want to change that perception.”

Hospice at CaringEdge offers many resources to both the patients as well as their families.

“Our goal is to be able to meet with a patient and their family as soon as we can,” Sherven said.

Among the medical professionals, such as certified nurses assistants and nurses, CaringEdge also provides professionals in mental-emotional wellbeing as well as spiritual wellbeing.

“We are there for the family as much as we are for the patient,” Hospice Director of Nursing Kassy Lipetzky said.“Being able to have some emotional support or help working through grief can help the family as well as the patient.”

Some of their mental, emotional, and spiritual hospice resources include a social worker and a chaplain.

“Our social worker is a great resource and can help with caregiver burnout. They can reach out to private caregiving agencies or direct anyone who can help to the patient and their family,” Lipetzky said. “She also is great for emotional support for family members and patients when dealing with anticipatory grief.”

An important resource the social worker offers is called a “life review.”

“A life review can help work through emotions and feelings if the family or a patient is having a hard time accepting a diagnosis,” Lipetzky said. “This can be really helpful and healing for the entire family.”

CaringEdge emphasizes the need for emotional support for all people of many different backgrounds.

“Another great resource is our chaplain,” Lipetzky said. “She is nondenominational so she can offer emotional and spiritual support to many people. She also has many connections to other churches and priests and can provide support for many different religious backgrounds.”

All of these resources are ways CaringEdge can help support both the family and the patient and make hospice a little less scary.

“We want to learn more about the family and the patient, whether it’s something they wish to do before they pass, or just simple day-to-day needs we can do to help them,” Sherven said. “If someone just got a terminal diagnosis and they call us, the sooner we can get to that patient and their family, the better we can care for them and create a relationship with them and their families.”

With the relationships that CaringEdge builds with its patients and their families, it can continue to move toward its goal of making hospice not something scary but a resource that allows for patients and their families to live each day to the fullest.