“We are here to help minimize pain, fear and uncertainty, and to maximize love and occasions of joy,” says Director of BJC Hospice Barbara Westland. BJC Hospice’s compassionate, holistic approach to end-of-life care—the recipient of many tribute gifts to the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation—recently received another testament to its exceptional quality and people by winning a Missouri Hospice and Palliative Care Association Heart of Hospice Award for its Lumina program.

Offered free-of-charge through the generous support of the Elaine Seldin Kornblum Hospice Fund and the Harvey Kornblum Foundation, Lumina helps hospice patients preserve the stories, values and experiences that define their lives. In telling their stories, many patients will feel a sense of completion, realizing all they have accomplished and how it has mattered.

“Lumina is a gift to the storyteller who may be approaching the end of life, to the listener invited for a time to enter that life and to family and friends in whose hearts the words and experiences resonate,” says Suzanne Doyle, Lumina coordinator.

Lumina relies on a current group of 10 intensely trained volunteers who interview, listen and help patients craft stories. The end product may be a letter, an audiotape, a video, a biography or a family tree. For example, one volunteer is helping a man create a bound book with one chapter for each of his 18 siblings. Another helped a woman make an audio CD so that her family could hear her voice telling her story.

BJC Hospice’s highly-skilled team of professionals, who serve the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of patients and their families, depend on charitable gifts to offer their special life-affirming programs. This most recent recognition follows closely on past Heart of Hospice Awards that BJC Hospice won for its WeavingsSM retreat in 2007 and its grief activity book, A Crack in the Sky, in 2008.

On average, 580 of the 1,500 annual BJC Hospice admissions are from Barnes-Jewish Hospital. We thank the many donors who direct tributes to our hospice funds to ensure that patients and their families have the resources they need to prepare them for the journey ahead.

From Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation Tributes Newsletter, First Quarter 2009