Managing Patients and Families at the Ending of Life: Hospice Assumptions, Structures, and Practice in Response to Staff Stress

Hospice programs do not identify burnout as a significant staff problem, even though there are many significant stressors for staff members doing hospice work. Hospices offer support in a wide variety of ways and settings through their human resources management. All this support is predicated on the assumption that the nature of the work requires it, and that hospice programs are responsible to provide it for staff. Certainly, in a rapidly changing health care environment that increasingly is expecting health care providers to do more with less, all systems of health care delivery will need to examine the management of stress and learn better how to provide a healthy work environment for those who deliver health care. The experience of hospices offers much to assist this process.