Stella’s Strategies for Palliative Care Nurses
IAHPC Board Member Stella Rithara is a nurse whose career started with a passion toward the community, creating awareness on preventable diseases, promoting health, and helping patients and family members in the community. A pioneer in palliative care, she began working in hospice in 2005 and has since become a mentor for community health care. Her love of sharing her knowledge and skills with fellow nurses has created a palliative care nurses’ family in Kenya.
We asked her to provide tips for palliative care nurses. The following are her responses, and a couple of inspirational quotes by others that she also sent along.
“There is no greater gift you can give or receive than to honor your calling. It’s why you were born, and how you become most truly alive.” —Oprah Winfrey
Palliative care nurses are pillars for palliative care services globally. Photo provided by Stella Rithara; used with permission.
Love your career!
If you are satisfied and happy to serve the community you live in (and perhaps beyond), you are in a position to gain satisfaction from your job as a caregiver. There is great power in providing a kind word, a listening ear, or an honest act of caring.
Engage with community leaders
Working in the community has taught me a lot: through engaging with community leaders I developed important skills, such as leadership, empathy, problem-solving and improved communication skills. Understanding the community’s needs improve the relationship between the clients, community and nurses working the community.
Seek out support for yourselves
Palliative care nurses love their jobs because of the difference they make in the lives of others. But they struggle with barriers to self-care and self-love. They also fight stress, anxiety, and depression. Seeking professional support and creating a support group among palliative care nurses helps.
Nurses need to create their own happiness in between their busy nursing schedules, by supporting each other and being there for each other.
“Nurses are a unique kind. They have this insatiable need to care for others, which is both their greatest strength and fatal flaw.” —Jean Watson, American nurse theorist and nursing professor
Sharing a cake after completion of a higher diploma in palliative care nursing was a moment of joy. Photo supplied by Stella Rithara; used with permission.
Do community outreach
Nurses are educators. Reaching out to the community to deliver the message of palliative care empowers both individuals and the community at large. This helps the community to take control of their own health and well-being, and enables people to make informed decisions about their health.
Share your accomplishments
Do not be shy about your accomplishments! Share with your significant others: your family, your peers, your colleagues, your institution.
Stella hits the road with community health promoter Mr. Philip to deliver palliative care home services. Photo supplied by Stella Rithara; used with permission.
Listen
By putting yourself in your clients’ shoes, you are able to give them information that helps them to understand their particular, individual situation best. Listening is very key in the field of palliative care.
Don’t let a challenging situation stop you
It is not always easy to reach the people in the community who need palliative care, as transportation options are limited. I have used whatever means are available, including the back of a motorbike.
Final words
I would like to encourage nurses globally, as you face countless challenges whether caring for a patient at the bedside or community level. While walking this journey of emotions—despair, fear, and stress—remember that you make nursing an incredible profession. Nurses are there when the first breath is taken, and palliative care nurses walk the journey until the last breath
Read Stella Rithara’s bio.