Program extends hospice’s reach
Hospices cannot reach everyone who could benefit from its services, especially in the case of people suffering from sudden loss or co-workers who are affected by death and illness among colleagues and families.
Therefore, a North Carolina hospice has developed a training program that extends a hospice’s reach into those areas that typically have been inaccessible. Called “TLC in the Workplace, Transitions, and Life Changes,” the program provides a half-day training session for managers and supervisors to help them manage grieving and caregiving employees, reports Pam Barrett, CHE, ACSW, president and chief executive officer of Hospice and Palliative Care of Greensboro. The not-for-profit, community-based provider serves more than 1,000 patients and families per year and has a comprehensive program that includes an inpatient and residential facility and a special pediatric palliative care program.
“You can’t check grief at the door when you go into the workplace, so we try to give managers and supervisors new knowledge and insights about the grieving process and how to strike a balance with the demands of grieving,” she says.
TLC also provides resources on how companies and workers can support employees who are working second shifts as caregivers to a parent or spouse. National statistics show that a growing number of people in the United States work force have caregiving responsibilities that are not related to children, Barrett says.
“Over the next 10 years, the total number of employed caregivers in the United States is expected to increase between 11 million and 15.6 million Americans,” she points out. “The projection for employers is they’ll lose between $11 billion and $29 billion dollars a year in lost productivity because of caregiving issues.”
Existing workplace training programs defined grief too narrowly and did not address the needs of an aging population in which increasing numbers of people are thrust into the role of caregiver, Barrett notes.
“We developed a compact, but comprehensive training course, and we began offering it in our local community,” she says. “Others became interested so we worked with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization [NHPCO] to make this available to other hospice professionals for their own service areas.”
As the program nears its second anniversary, there have been about 50 hospices trained in TLC, Barrett says.
“A hospice who has received the whole training can become licensed to take this forth into its own business communities,” she says. “Because of our experience in working with grieving people and caregivers, we felt hospices are uniquely qualified to help businesses with this training.”
While businesses may do their best to respond to specific incidents, such as a well-known employee’s accidental or sudden death or even a workplace shooting, they typically do not have the training to respond in a systematic approach, Barrett says. “One thing we offer in the TLC management course are specific checklists, reminders, and pointers on how to work with the employee involved and the employee’s peer group,” Barrett explains. (See sample checklist.)
Hospice and Palliative Care of Greensboro has trained more than 40 local companies, representing about 11,000 employees, she says. The hospice charges companies $1,950 to train up to 25 managers at a local company. This includes a detailed TLC training manual and a half-day course, Barrett says.
Hospices interested in receiving TLC training could contact NHPCO or attend a preconference seminar at the NHPCO’s 20th Management Leadership Conference & Exposition on Sept. 22-24, 2005, in Hollywood, FL. The TLC seminar is available on Sept. 21 at a cost of $175 per person or $275 for two attendees. “If they take the training and employ some of the strategies, it has a lot of potential positive impact on the company’s cultures,” Barrett says.
Prior to developing TLC training, the Greensboro hospice, like most hospices, responded to local companies’ calls for help on a reactive basis, she notes. “People call us when there’s a tragedy,” she says. “For example, some area executives were killed in a small plane crash, and we were called in to provide support and training for employees.”
Businesses that already have received the training are better prepared to handle the aftermath, Barrett says. The Greensboro hospice trained managers at a very large employer, and shortly afterward one of the employees died suddenly, she recalls. “The manager called here immediately because we do follow-up support for them, and said, ‘I’ve got the TLC manual on my lap; we’ve notified employees, and we followed the checklist,’” Barrett says. “The manager felt so empowered, and we were happy to say that they did all the right things.”
Also, there have been numerous situations where employers, who have taken the TLC training, were able to maintain caregiving employees’ schedules to meet their own needs, as well as the employees’ needs, she says.
The training is interactive, including role playing for negotiating potential changes to the work schedule of employees and other types of supervisor-employee conversations, Barrett says. “We talk about what’s appropriate and what’s counterproductive in terms of talking with employees after they return to work from a significant personal loss,” she says. “A lot of times, people don’t know what to say — they just want to be supportive.”
The checklist for grieving employees includes an item for how the company will acknowledge the loss and an item for noting the anniversary date of the loss, so the supervisor might anticipate a drop of productivity around that time, Barrett says. Other items on the checklist include insurance matters and who cleans out a person’s desk when the employee has died, she says.
Need More Information?
- Pam Barrett, CHE, ACSW, President, Chief Executive Officer, Hospice and Palliative Care of Greensboro, 2500 Summit Ave., Greensboro, NC 27405. Telephone: (336) 621-2500. Also, a link about TLC in the Workplace is available on the web site at www.hospicegso.org.
Hospices cannot reach everyone who could benefit from its services, especially in the case of people suffering from sudden loss or co-workers who are affected by death and illness among colleagues and families.
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