"I started working at Hospice of Iredell in 1986 when they were looking for a social worker and a bereavement coordinator. When I joined the hospice staff, there was the director, two nurses, and myself.
Before receiving our Medicare certification, we were operating strictly on fundraising. We relied heavily on volunteers and community support. For example, a family in town had an abandoned chicken house that they were not using, which is where we stored our donated hospital beds. Out of gratitude, he would go to Winston-Salem and bid on pallets of medical supplies and donate them to us.
It might be diapers, a pallet of air conditioners, little window units, etc. Another gentleman whose wife had been under our care built us a shed for storage. Our community has really been behind hospice and has helped us so much through the years.
Many people ask me about working for hospice, ‘How in the world do you do that? Why do you want to do that?’. I’ve always felt that death should be a celebration of life. I love being able to be a part of that special journey and helping patients die as comfortably as possible.
It makes me very proud to be a hospice social worker. The proudest moment of my career is receiving the Sharon O. Dixon Clinical Excellence Award from The Carolinas Center. The Sharon O. Dixon Award recognizes excellent clinical care with hospice within the state of NC. I don’t consider myself an angel, but it makes me really proud when patients or families refer to us as ‘the hospice angels’. When I first started, I would go home and say to my husband, ‘it doesn’t even feel like a job, it doesn’t feel like I’m working’. I would go into patient homes and be truly treated like family."
Karen Luther- Celebrating 38 Years at HPCIC
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