is not at work, she has constant reminders of her work from the pager that she carries in her pocketbook to the makeshift hospital supply room in the trunk of her car. I truly feel that she is special. One day she was driving me home, her pager went off and without skipping a beat she drove to her patient's house. She told me to stay in the car while she addressed the needs of her patient. I was in shock, cause I never really realized how much time that her job took.
             Back to my original question. How can anyone be a hospice nurse? Every time I asked my mom this question, I got the same stock answer. She says that her job is not depressing. She is helping others. She tells me that she feels comfortable because she is making her patient's final days as positive and as comfortable as she possibly can. This attitude and approach to her job helps her to get through the grief of waking up one morning to a phone call saying that she doesn't need to go to a certain address because her patient has died through the night. This is the point of hospice. It is to make the patient feel as dignified and as comfortable as possible as they near their end. "We need to stand by the dying, and by our actions, say that we believe life has value, right up to the end." [Beresford 1995]
             What is hospice? "The word "hospice" stems from the Latin word hospitium meaning guest house." [HTML1 DocumentEncodingutf-8Death with Dignity] The hospitium was intended for sick and weary travelers. A HOSPICE IS NOT A SPECIFIC PLACE. Instead, hospice is a method of care designed for the terminally ill. A hospice does not try to cure a person. Instead, hospice workers try to make a patient's final days as comfortable as possible. The hos
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