tonight we look at the importance of palliative care in rural communities from three perspectives
our brief but spectacular team spoke with dr jennifer blechman of bend oregon hospice and
social worker liz anderson of asheville north carolina and patient joanie devine
alongside her fiance david keenan of waynesville north carolina many people say how can you do the
work that you do it seems so depressing or so sad but i find my job so rewarding
maybe i think about death a little bit more than other people but it's not on the top of my mind
i think what i really think about is how to live a meaningful life
as long as i'm living a life that makes me happy time doesn't matter to me i could go in any day
but take advantage of every day that i do have and i'd rather live that way
i have worked as a hospice and palliative care social worker primarily in rural virginia and
rural north carolina my first job was in a rural hospital in vermont
we did everything we did deliveries we would work in the er we worked in the intensive care unit
i learned about palliative care and realized it was really what i was
missing in medicine i was born with a rare genetic disorder called cystinosis and i was supposed to
have been dead by the age of 13. we live in a very small town our local hospital doesn't even have a
dialysis unit we have some challenges as far as access for example i live in central oregon the
agency i work for we serve a ten thousand square mile radius we have patients that are as far as
three or three and a half hours away you have one social worker that covers seven different
counties we have to be much more proactive than in a big city so we try to predict what somebody may
be dealing with and make sure they have the tools available to them in their home we do her dialysis
here at the house five days out of the week and it takes upwards of four and a half five hours a day
i think healthcare professionals have a really hard time in rural communities because they get
pulled in so many different directions and so a healthcare provider like a social worker or
nurse or doctor might actually be asked to pray with a patient because they're they're having
a hard time getting those adequate resources my palliative care nurse grants carmen she's
probably i would say my best friend she's a nurse she's basically my therapist
she's everything i need in one one person she's magnificent you know giving joanie the tools to
think things through and find a game plan of how to approach things the work that we ask patients
and caregivers to do when they're seriously ill is pretty tremendous and i have some
some stories of caregivers that have heard some really heavy things from the people that they love
and they haven't had a place to talk about that and i think particularly people in rural
communities are carrying that around alone i'm pretty at peace with it dying is a release of pain
a release of everything that you feel negatively in life many people get to a place of acceptance
and a place of peace before they die and that can be so rewarding for us to see which is
just a small fraction of how it can help their families and loved ones that they leave behind
when we allow people to share their emotional experience of suffering or watching a loved one
suffer that in itself is intervention that in itself alleviates suffering i
am liz anderson my name is david keenan my name is dr jenny blackman my name is joni devon and
this is my brief but spectacular take on the benefit of palliative care in a rural community
and we are so grateful that you shared these stories with us and you can find
all of our brief but spectacular segments online at pbs.org newshour slash brief