Vitas

“People see hospice as a very specific model of care,” says a longtime VITAS nurse. “But hospice is created day to day by the patient. That’s why I love working for VITAS—because we allow each patient to decide what hospice should look like.”

VITAS Innovative Hospice Care® believes hospice care should be whatever the patient and the community need it to be.

Margaret Thorne-Henderson of Wellington, VITAS’ community access representative in Palm Beach County, is charged with reaching the underserved populations who do not, traditionally, want or get hospice care.

Thorne-Henderson understands the cultural barriers. She was born in the Republic of Panama but is of African-American descent. A member of a military family (her niece is Army Specialist Shoshana Johnson, captured and held in Iraq along with Jessica Lynch and four other members of their Company), Thorne-Henderson is a retired U.S. Air Force major who was deployed to Desert Storm and Rwanda.

She has been in management throughout her nursing career, and served as DON in a local 168-bed skilled nursing facility before joining VITAS. Spanish is her first language, but she is fluent in English. If Margaret Thorne-Henderson has one foot planted in the African-American culture, the other is just as firmly rooted in the Latino culture.

“There are similarities,” she says of the two populations. “Latinos are highly emotional: if we can’t meet the needs of our own, we can’t ask for help. Blacks have come a long way, but we are still resistant to the idea of hospice care.”

Both cultures, she says, prefer to go it alone when loved ones face terminal illness. “We see hospice as the angel of death—you call hospice and, sure enough, you’re going to die.”

Thorne-Henderson understands fully, but she is confident she can change those attitudes in Latinos and African Americans, and address the concerns of Haitians, Jews and other diverse groups.

“I let them know hospice is a service. I ask, ‘What do you need? Let hospice enhance the quality of life for your loved one. You are the one who determines what hospice looks like.

“I want to reach the faith leaders, because it is through them that I will reach the people.

But I have been in Palm Beach County since 1991, and I have a reputation,” she says. “I know that if I am truthful and honest with my discourse, my integrity will carry my message through to the most hesitant cultures.”

Submitted by Susan Acocella, general manager of VITAS Innovative Hospice Care® of Palm Beach County, can be reached at 800-93-VITAS.

James Lofton, R.N., is a marketing representative with a clinical background and a passion to serve the terminally ill … made stronger by his own family tragedy. He is a father, a husband, a nurse, a coach, a student, a salesman, a servant.

Lofton is interim co-manager at VITAS’ inpatient hospice unit at Hialeah Hospital. In addition, he is the liaison between VITAS Innovative Hospice Care® and the Veteran’s Administration in Miami-Dade County, teaching the benefits of hospice care. His wife says he comes home smiling every day.

Lofton gravitated toward hospital work in his teens, maybe because it was the work his grandmother did. He was an environmental service aide—”a janitor,” he says—and then a social work assistant before getting his nursing degree.

He was working in a hospital setting when a nurse told him how much she enjoyed working for a local hospice, so Lofton gave VITAS a try. “It reminded me of the way nursing was before it became all about numbers and quotas,” he says.

VITAS’ focus on veterans’ hospice care attracted Lofton. Although he had no military experience, he found that his years of martial arts training gave him the spirit if not the experiences of the veterans he was caring for. “We hit it off immediately,” he says of the vets he cared for.

Today Lofton keeps his nursing skills sharp by working at Jackson Memorial Hospital on weekends, while his “gift of gab” serves him as a VITAS rep. “I should have been in marketing way before I became a nurse,” he laughs. “Marketing is where my real talents lie.”

To build on those strengths, today he is pursuing a master’s degree in nursing with a minor in marketing at the online University of Phoenix. He hopes to become a nurse practitioner.

That in a nutshell is Lofton’s story: former environmental service aide to future nurse practitioner. But his career and his private life have so influenced one another that both stories must be told.

At 21, Lofton was a single parent of two children under the age of two. There were times when they played in the corridor while he sat in a college classroom. When they were 4 and 6, he met the “beautiful woman” who became his wife in 1998.

A year ago, right after the couple had their first child, his teenage son, James IV, suffered traumatic brain injury in an accident. “I had a newborn, and my firstborn was in a coma,” he says.

It has been a year of struggle, worry and rehabilitation, and there is more hard work ahead, but his son graduated from high school in December of 2006 with a full scholarship to Broward Community College. His baby daughter is a 15-month-old joy to them all.

Lofton says working with patients at the end of life actually helps him cope with daily family life. “If you have problems at home, then you see a patient who is facing less than six months of life, your own problems become smaller,” he found. He strives for balance, scheduling work around the needs of his family so he can coach his older daughter in sports or join his son at the gym.

And Lofton continues to learn more about himself. He likes consistency and control; the Serenity Prayer guides all parts of his life; “‘The wisdom to know the difference’ is the hardest part,” he admits.

“I was reading a book on leadership recently,” he says, “and discovered that I am not a role model, but a servant. My goal is to help people achieve their goals. I want to inspire.”

Just one more job that James Lofton does well.

Submitted by Brian Payne, Senior General Manager of VITAS Innovative Hospice Care® of Miami-Dade County, can be reached at (954) 437-5433.