Quality of Life: Palliative care needed more during pandemic
People grieve the loss of loved ones often with support of family and friends.
During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, people are experiencing a variety of losses, but may have less in-person contact with those who they would normally rely on for support.
In each of the three years before the pandemic, more than 350 people attended a community memorial service in Butler Memorial Hospital for people who experienced a death through Butler Health System.
The fourth annual service would have been held last year if it weren't for the pandemic, so the health system commissioned a Pittsburgh artist to create the Memorial Art Sculpture for the meditation garden at BMH where people can reflect on losses.
A death is a significant loss, but people have struggled to deal with loss of routine, loss of experience and other changes brought on by the pandemic, said Jenna Rhodaberger, a palliative care social worker and coordinator of the employee assistance program at the health system.“To me there are just as many nondeath losses that our community experienced — kids at home instead of school, loss of personal contact, working from home — and they need to be acknowledged. The sculpture will ground all of this,” Rhodaberger said.Metal artist Jan Loney created the sculpture to represent the seasons of change the community is experiencing and the community coming together at a time when people are apart.The verb palliate means to cloak in Latin, Loney said, so she designed and cut sheets of copper to take the form of a cloak for the sculpture that stands about 8 feet tall.She cut small pieces from the sheets of copper and attached them to the sculpture as leaves. Some of the leaves were painted a blueish green to look like patina that would develop with an age, some were polished and clear-coated to preserve the shine and some were left alone to develop patina to represent the different stages of life and changing of the seasons, she said.Loney said she thought about people caring for loved ones, and how people at the beginning and end of their lives depend on caregivers when making the sculpture.“I was thinking about all of those elements when I created the sculpture. It was my artistic inspiration. It was an honor to be selected as the artist for this piece,” Loney said.After the sculpture was installed in December, BHS sent memorial cards containing a picture of the sculpture in the garden, an invitation to visit the garden and a website where people can post memorial messages to 300 people who experienced a death through the health system, Rhodaberger said.
The sculpture, garden and website are intended to help people grieve during the pandemic.“Our hope is that this space is used. They can come out here and know other people are experiencing similar struggles,” Rhodaberger said.Traditional ways of mourning through funeral services and meeting with support groups were disrupted during the pandemic and held virtually or online, she said.“It really has been a challenge to find support from other people. Mourning has had to become individual. It's been different for each person,” she said.She said she finds it encouraging that many people have participated in Zoom or online support group meetings, realizing there are ways other than face-to-face to talk to others.“There's not one way to mourn. It looks different from one person to the next,” Rhodaberger said.She said people can email her at jenna.rodaburger@butlerhealthsystem.org to find support groups.In a report for health care providers, the National Institutes of Health said anyone can experience grief from various losses due to COVID.The NIH said all people are susceptible to multiple losses daily, including loss of financial security, loss of social and physical connections and loss of autonomy to move freely in the world.Many people also are experiencing a loss of physical and mental health, and general safety and autonomy.For bereaved individuals, funerals and burials are postponed or held remotely, often without presence of family or the possibility of the warm embrace from loved ones.Media regularly carry stories of families denied opportunities to say goodbye before a death, or loved ones saying goodbye over the phone or by video, uncertain whether each communication is the last. Clinicians are isolating themselves from their own families out of concern about spreading infection, the NIH said.
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