‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’: hospice workers share 12 lessons about life and death

Hospice and end-of-life workers discuss what they’ve learned from their work and patients in their last moments

“Hospice” can be a loaded term. Some see it as synonymous with death and “giving up”, as Courtney, a full-time hospice nurse practitioner in Missouri, puts it. But Courtney, who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons, doesn’t see it that way.

“Hospice is giving someone a gift,” she says of her patients, who have typically received a terminal diagnosis with a timeline of six months or less. “It is giving them the gift of being able to stay at home and eat or not eat whatever they want. It is the gift of comfort.”