Melissa Jamison, RN, Finds Challenges and Satisfactions in Hospice Nursing

By Nancy Kennedy

At its very best, professional nursing addresses the entire human complex of body, mind and soul. Nurses provide highly skilled clinical care, emotional support, patient and family education, and safety. Nurses advocate for their patients, protect them from complications, and recognize their individuality through personalized, compassionate care.

These values and traits are perfectly personified by expert nurses such as hospice nurse Melissa Jamison, RN. Melissa began her nursing career in pediatrics, caring for infants and children in the early years of life. She also gained experience in many other specialties, including trauma and critical care nursing, until her career path led her to hospice nursing. From one end of the lifespan to the other, Melissa’s nursing career is a complete, full circle of caring and healing, abundant with experience and relationships that made a significant difference in the lives of countless patients.

Melissa is a member of the senior staff at VITAS Healthcare; she has been employed there for 13 years and now serves as Registered Nurse Case Manager. She loves the highly specialized field that is hospice care. “Hospice care is a specialty; it is care for people with life limiting medical conditions which will not improve,” she explains. “It’s care for people who need support and comfort at the end of life. There are many benefits for the patient and the family.

“As a hospice nurse, I help people and families through the journey that is the end of life. It can be sad but it is also very beautiful. The end of life is a natural, normal process and it enables the patient to be at home, with family, wherever home may be.”

Melissa says that excellence in hospice nursing requires being attentive, compassionate, flexible and creative. “You have to be able to adapt, to go with the flow. You have to be a team player. It doesn’t matter what your previous nursing experience is, but you have to have some experience and bring a set of skills.” Creativity can be an especially important asset for providing pain management, which is a significant dimension of end of life care.

Misconceptions about hospice care persist among the public, Melissa points out, and says that is sometimes a source of frustration. “There are taboos about hospice. People are often uncomfortable talking about it. As a result, patients miss out on valuable benefits. We need more public education about it so that the public understands that hospice is not about giving up hope.”

One common belief, Melissa says, is that hospice is only for cancer patients. In fact, the majority of patients receiving hospice care do not have cancer, but a wide range of other diagnoses. “We often have patients with heart disease, lung disease, Parkinson’s Disease, liver and kidney disease and many other conditions. Our interdisciplinary team consists of licensed practical nurses, home health aides, social workers, chaplain, the physician, nurses and myself as the nurse case manager. We are all very supportive of each other and present for the patients. You can get quite attached to the patient, and so we do experience a lot of loss. We attend the funerals for our patients, which gives us closure and means so much to the families. They are emotional when they see us, and are so grateful.”

VITAS Healthcare has been in the Pittsburgh market, serving the community here, for the last twenty years, and now has locations in 15 states. It is a leading provider of hospice and palliative care. To learn more about VITAS Healthcare and about hospice care, visit vitas.com or call (412) 799-2101.