Grief Series - Episode 4

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Transcript

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You're listening to Vital Signs, a podcast for Sentara providers. Welcome to episode 4 of the grief series.

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In today's episode we're joined by Tommy Bateman, director of clinical Practice management,

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and Peggy Haymes, licensed clinical mental health counselor. Before we turn things over to the team,

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here are a few important CME announcements. This episode is accredited for AMA PRA Category 1 credits.

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For full accreditation, designation, and disclosure information, please refer to the show notes.

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And now here are Tommy and Peggy.

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Welcome back

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to Vital Signs, a podcast for Sentara providers. We're on session 4,

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the 4th and final session, talking about grief with Peggy Hames and as you can probably notice in the tone

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and the tempo of my voice that Peggy has had an effect on me. I'm slowing myself down and she's so good at it.

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So, Peggy, thank you again and, and what, on this episode, we wanted to talk about uh

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What a good treatment team looks like. We talked about, you know, perhaps walking a patient down the hallway to the,

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to the case manager, social worker or bringing that case manager, social worker to your room, to the patient's room,

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and, and starting to wrap that person around with a good team. So let's talk about that.

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What does a good team look like?

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So part of that will vary with what your setting is. Um,

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I'm also a, a minister and did a year's residency and uh.

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Level One trauma center.

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And we had a long history in that center, so the, the medical staff was very well trained to call on the chaplain,

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um, in any kind of, of grief, and, and many times I'd go in the room and say I'm the one who can sit down

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and just we can just talk like this.

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Um, I really encourage doctors who are, uh, in clinics,

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uh, who have private practices or group practices, pay attention that, like, if your patient says,

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I've been doing better since I started working with this therapist and, and they're really helping me, get the name of that therapist.

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Um-hum. And write it down. Have a list that you can give to your patients.

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I've had any number of clients come to me and they will say, I saw my doctor,

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I'm, yeah, I'm anxious or depressed or whatever.

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And they gave me

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some names and you were on there.

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Um, and, and so it, to make an easy,

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an easy referral. They don't have to say, you know, you just say, well, you need to see a therapist.

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Well, how do I find one? Where do I start with that? Already overwhelmed.

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Have that list and, and I know, I, I used to work a lot with one large practice

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and I knew they kind of cross-pollinated among the doctors and, and nurses here are the really good folks and here are the people we send to.

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So to have that informa information easily accessible because again grief brain,

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if you're really grieving, your brain doesn't work that well. Right.

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Uh, social workers, uh, case managers, sometimes part of the grief is you have an elderly

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parent. Who can no longer live at home.

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And where do you even start with that?

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And I used to work with a a social worker who was absolutely fabulous in helping families sort

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through those decisions. Uh, where do you start? What are you looking for, what's Medicare going to cover,

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not cover?

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And to answer those practical questions. So you, you really have

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two prongs. One is, uh, the emotional piece. One is the practical piece.

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They may need a referral to a lawyer because there are estate issues.

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Right.

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Um,

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There,

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he may also be grieving the fact that estate issues are breaking their family apart.

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Which I've also seen. Oh yeah.

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Um,

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You know,

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sometimes it may be to.

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Uh

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Uh, a grief informed, like meditation practice. Mhm.

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So just uh be to be aware of the people in your area, the people in your system.

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Who can help support some part of this grief journey.

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It sounds like

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You know,

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We haven't identified what the core team is, but we have said that.

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You know, there's, there always or almost always will have to be a team of professionals around somebody dealing with grief.

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There's, um, sometimes, you know, a chaplain or the person's pastor is the appropriate person to bring in because of the spiritual component that

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may complicate some of their thinking,

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um, the lawyer.

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The doctor, of course, because that's, you know, probably maybe the first contact, a social worker to help navigate all the different ins and outs,

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the counselor, you know, cause social workers sometimes specialize in just the system stuff and then the counselor's dealing with the one on one stuff and,

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and, uh, so. Is what what I'm hearing is it's definitely not gonna be just the the PCP,

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right? It has to be, yeah, it can't be just

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and, and, and the other thing to know is, you know, we've been talking about grief in, in terms of death,

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um, but again, that the grief.

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Begins.

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The, the minute you make a diagnosis.

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And sometimes that grief begins the minute that you bring the possibility of that diagnosis into the room.

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Mhm.

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Mhm.

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And it may be, you know, if you have a, a long illness like uh Alzheimer's or.

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Um, like some, some lung diseases or some cancers.

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If you have a long illness, by the time the patient, uh, dies, their, their family member,

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by the time the person dies, their, their family member who's your patient, they've already done their grieving.

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So, you know, if they're saying, yeah, I'm, I'm doing really OK now.

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Don't assume that they're not.

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Yeah, there's a, I'm hearing a theme across these sessions that assumptions are gonna.

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Uh, can, is, is, is a real big, uh, uh, pitfall for, uh,

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for providers. Um, yeah, I, I hear it, I hear it, I hear it often like,

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um,

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That

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Nope, I lost my train of thought there. So, hey, people.

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Forget about what we said. Where were we when we just left off there? Well, well, making assumptions and, and another example of that is,

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uh, you know, I've worked with trauma survivors for a long time.

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And sometimes like a a parent will die, like their dad was man of the year,

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so they get all the.

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You know, press when, when he dies and people make assumptions about, oh,

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this is so awful, you must be grieving so hard.

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And what they don't know is inside the walls of their home, he was horribly, horrifically abusive.

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Right.

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And so that person

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is really gonna be good with the loss.

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Mhm, mhm.

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Yeah.

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Yeah

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Interesting. So I think, I think what I would like to do now, Peggy, and I, and I do not want to put you on the spot,

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but I want to draw from your experience. Can you tell us,

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if appropriate, a story of one that You know, the grief was recognized.

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Maybe you or somebody else worked with them and, and what was that story like and how did it end?

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What, what, do you have a success story that you'd like to talk about?

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Um,

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I have, I have kind of an unusual story, but it's. It happened in, in the hospital. Um,

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I actually got called in to do a mediation.

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Uh, a couple of family members had nearly come to blows.

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And they had to the point they had called security in.

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Um, elderly mom had, had fallen and, and gotten injured and was going to need not to live alone.

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And uh.

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So there's several siblings and they called me in to to mediate.

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And I kind of realized in my gut that this was a grief

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situation.

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And so I began by simply asking.

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In in birth order, each adult child.

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Um,

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What do you want?

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For your mom.

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And what do you fear?

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And every single sibling had the same answer.

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It was they wanted to take care of their mom as in her last years as she had taken care of them in

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their early years.

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Their fear was they weren't going to have the money to do that.

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And it was amazing, I, I talked with them for 2 hours and they stayed another hour.

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Just talking with each other.

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So we got beneath that surface stuff.

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And listened to and named the grief.

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And the fear that went along with the grief and their hopes and what they really wanted.

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We made that heart connection.

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And when they left that day, they were, they had a plan and they were starting to work and they were in agreement.

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Um, to me that that was one of the most meaningful interactions I had when I was at that hospital.

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And you could already see just in the, in the work that they did in those few hours that they had a plan and uh.

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That, that they, the, the likelihood of success from that um uh was pretty high,

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sounded like.

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Yeah, they, it, it, it completely flipped

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the interactions and they realized they really were on the same page,

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but fear, you know, makes us reactive. And this was also a good example of team because they also talked with the

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um case manager.

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Who helped them with some referrals to to play for places to check into.

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Um, but that was a, a pretty dramatic change just by being able to acknowledge and talk about the grief.

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I love it. And that does kinda bring back what you said earlier where the, the,

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the chair was swiveled and somebody looked eye to eye to eye and, and gave them space to feel and experience that,

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that that is happening and as you said, sometimes the recognition that it's happening started the process um in in,

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in, in a, in a direction towards uh I don't know about healing, but dealing with it,

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feeling better.

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Yeah, and, and, and what I did was I provided a safe container

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for them so they could go into that fear because.

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It was safe

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You know, safety, yeah.

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Yeah, Peggy, that's, I, I love these stories and uh

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I wanna hear more of them, but um we're limited by time. And, and at the end of this session,

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I, I wanted to give you the opportunity. Is there any parting words that you'd like to give to our audience today?

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Uh, first of all, thank you for what you do.

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Um, I, I feel deeply blessed to have a wonderful medical team in my life and,

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and that I feel.

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Really comfortable with and uh and tended to.

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Um, and thank you for the difference you make and the fact that you can

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see things and name things and help people get on the journey that that they need to travel.

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Yes, absolutely. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Centera providers and anybody else that happens to be listening to this,

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and thank you, Peggy. I really appreciate your time today. You have, uh, um, first off,

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made my time here. I'm much more relaxed and, uh,

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feeling pretty good. And, and, and, and here's the thing about these topics is I can't help as a listener and as the one interviewing,

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I'm sitting here about my father, you know, and, and my parents, the people I've lost,

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the things that I didn't get to do, and

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I can, I can, I bet even as professionals that.

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We're, we're helping people with their grief, but man, we can't help but think of our own cause we all have it,

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and so, um,

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This is a good topic to just keep, keep in mind.

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Absolutely, um.

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A lot of people came to Kubel Ross's workshops.

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Because their workplace sent them to quote, learn about grief. Mhm.

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And they always wound up dealing with their own grief, yeah.

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Yeah.

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Wonderful. I mean, that's

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That's, that's wonderful stuff. I'm, I'm, I'm.

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I love this. I love this time with you, Peggy. How can we find you? I know you have a website.

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Uh, if anybody wants to look into you more. Yes, my website's very easy. It's Peggy Hays.com.

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That's spelled Peggy, P E G G Y. Hays is H A Y M E S dot com,

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Peggy Hames.com.

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And if you want to reach out via email, it's Peggy@ Peggy Haymes.com. Thank you so much.

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Well,

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Thank you again for coming. I said thank you about 15 times today and I'm gonna say it again,

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thank you. Um,

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And I hope, uh, I hope everybody had a, had a, uh, got something out of this. Y'all have a great one.

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Bye.

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Thank you for joining us. You've been listening to Sentara Vital Signs, a podcast created for Sentara providers.

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As a reminder, please check today's show notes for details on how to claim your continuing education credits.

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That's it for now, but we'll be back soon with another episode of Vital Signs, the podcast that delivers evidence-based

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education for physicians and healthcare providers on the go.