The Future Leaders Awards program is brought to you in partnership with PointClickCare. The program is designed to recognize up-and-coming industry members who are shaping the next decade of senior housing, skilled nursing, home health and hospice care. To see this year’s future leaders, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.
Jessica DeGrechie, division director for Hospice at BAYADA Home Health Care, has been named a 2021 Future Leader by Hospice News.
To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40-years-old or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for seniors and the committed professionals who ensure their well-being.
DeGrechie sat down with Hospice News to talk about her career trajectory and the ways the industry is evolving.
What drew you to the hospice field?
I’m a social worker. My background previous to hospice was working with adolescents in crisis with mental health challenges, and then adults with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. My last job prior to joining BAYADA was working with adults with HIV-AIDS. That was at a nonprofit, and they were starting to reduce funding and cut hours.
I started looking for jobs and saw this position for BAYADA hospice. It was a startup, and it was the very first hospice office in BAYADA. It piqued my interest, and I had taken a class in college on death and dying. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed that class, just because it prompted a lot of reflection.
I applied for the job and got it. It was the first time as a social worker where I felt like I was welcomed, and people appreciated the support. In previous roles, it’s not that people didn’t need the help, but they didn’t necessarily want the help.
What would you say is the biggest lesson you’ve learned since starting to work in hospice?
Hospice is humbling work, and it does put things in perspective. It really forces you to evaluate what makes you happy and your quality of life. This is the work we do with our patients all the time, helping them find closure and appreciate that they’ve accomplished things that they wanted in their lifetime. If they weren’t able to accomplish what they had hoped, help them grieve through that process.
The work we do with our patients forces us to do it for ourselves, which has helped me personally make different decisions and prioritize what’s important. I think it’s helped me, my partner and my family to pursue what we love and do it now.
If you could change one thing with an eye towards the future of hospice, what would it be?
I would love to see physicians refer patients sooner, so people really have the opportunity to receive the services for a long period of time. It’s really common to hear families say that they wish they had known about hospice sooner. It gives me goosebumps to think about it, because families don’t necessarily know what’s available to them until they start receiving the care.
I think it would also be nice for us to think about extending the benefit beyond six months. I’d really love to see that, and more opportunity for our nurse practitioners. They’re very involved, but they can’t do certain things that a physician does, such as certify a patient’s prognosis of six months or less. I’d love to open that up, because I think they’re competent and qualified to do that.
What do you foresee as being different about the hospice industry, looking ahead to 2022?
We’ve had to adapt to living through a pandemic. I remember when COVID first started hitting our communities, we leaned in and didn’t run from it. We took care of a lot of COVID-positive patients. We were prepared to take care of the most vulnerable.
Hospice takes care of not just the individual, but the family, and if they live in a facility, the facility’s staff. Some of what we had to adapt, doing some virtual visits and wearing full [personal protective equipment], encouraged us to be more creative about how to approach care and make sure that we’re still able to make a connection and make a difference.
In 2022, technology is going to continue to play a significant role in what we do. My hope is that other industries and health care professionals lean on hospice providers to understand how to take care of older patients and vulnerable people in the middle of the pandemic. One of the unique things about hospice is that we have bereavement coordinators. We have trained people who can help with the grief that people have endured as a result of this.
How would you describe the future of hospice?
I’d like to see change so that people don’t necessarily shy away from it. It’s not easy telling somebody that they’re dying. That’s not an easy conversation, and it’s not one that anyone wants to have. The reality is: It happens. It’s our responsibility to make sure if people are facing the end of their lives, we allow them to be informed about what care they can receive.
My hope is that people open up to it and see it as a benefit and embrace it for what it is and understand why people need it. We like to avoid it, or maybe not acknowledge that someone’s not well and they are likely to die in six months.
I’d like for people to be able to die with dignity and with support, feeling like they were prepared — and not in a hospital.
Companies featured in this article:
