By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor
St. Elizabeth Hospice will hold a groundbreaking today for its Grief and Loss Center, to be built on the Edgewood campus.
Brian Jones, director of St. Elizabeth Hospice, said the Center will fill a need in the community.
“We serve around 1,200 to 1,300 hospice patients every year and when you add in all of their family members, it becomes a pretty good number of people,” Jones said. We also serve a number of people in the community who never use our hospice program, when it comes to bereavement care.”
Currently, bereavement services are provided at the Hospice Center, so in many cases, people who utilize them are coming to the same place where their loved one passed away, which can be very traumatic.
“Some families can get beyond that and it’s not an issue, others have a very hard time with that,” Jones said. “It’s almost like going to a funeral home for grief counseling and we felt like a separate building that was specific to aftercare was more appropriate.”
The $1.5 million, 3,000-square-foot Grief and Loss Center will include a large group room, small conference room, three counseling rooms and a common area. It will also house a coffee shop, break/kitchen area, living/sitting area for families, meditation garden and administrative offices.
The median length of stay at St. Elizabeth Hospice is only about eight days, but it can take months for family members to come to grips with the loss of a loved one.
“We are really involved in taking care of patients while they are still alive, but once they pass away, we have this whole program that takes care of the survivors,” Jones said. “This gives us a facility that is uniquely designed with that in mind. Most families do well, but there are people who need more intense care, so we do individual counseling and support groups.”
Support services are often provided at offsite facilities, such as churches, but this will allow St. Elizabeth to offer more comprehensive grief and loss counseling on campus.
“St. Elizabeth provides 13 months of aftercare to survivors, which includes mailings, phone calls and counseling,” Jones said. “Even before the patient passes away we meet with children and spouses individually and in group settings to help them prepare for the loss.”
Bereavement services are offered to anyone in the community who has experienced a loss, not just families of hospice patients, and all services are free of charge.
“We do a lot of work with schools or even workplaces where there has been a tragic death and people need extra support,” Jones said.
The target date for completion of the Grief and Loss Center is May, 2016.
Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytrib.com