“We’ve been able to allow family members to visit their dying loved one when hospitals couldn’t.”

Gabrielle Staten, RN, BSN, an associate patient care manager for the inpatient unit at Houston Hospice, spoke to TMC News on April 22, 2020.

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We had to implement restrictions because of COVID-19, which included an age limit on visitors. Right now, patients can only have two visitors at a time, and they have to be 13 or older. We had to put some kind of limitation on it for the safety of our patients and staff, but we wanted to make sure patients still got to be with their family members. We had the option of saying no visitors, but we couldn’t do that.

We have a patient in his mid-forties who has three children, and one of them is only 10. He is inpatient here because of an uncontrolled sign or symptom—that’s why he can’t be at home. But we don’t want to prevent children, especially, from seeing their parents prior to their passing. So, our social worker went to our director of clinical services and our CEO and got permission for the young boy to go into the garden and see his dad through a window. We put the son through the same screening everyone goes through and brought him through a side entrance and into the garden. Because the boy was going to be masked and the dad was going to be masked, I said that the boy could go ahead and go out into the garden with the dad, because our gardens are set up for beds to go out there. So, instead of just seeing each other through the window, they were actually able to hug on each other and spend some time together.

Just seeing that little boy with his dad—it took me back. I lost my mom when I was young and letting him have that moment, it means everything.

It’s not something we can do for every patient. Like any exception, it was on a case-by-case basis, but in a time like this I’m so thankful we can allow visitors at all. There are so many families going through this very thing, and so many patients who are in the hospital that don’t have this opportunity with their children or families. We’ve been able to allow family members to visit their dying loved one when hospitals couldn’t—we’ve had patients come straight from the hospital and their families come straight from home and see them for the first time in weeks.  

Just the fact that we were able to do something that makes a huge difference in a person’s life—it was wonderful. How can you describe a moment like that?

—Gabrielle Staten, as told to TMC Pulse Senior Writer Alexandra Becker