In La Mesa one hospital has revived a program that provides comfort and support to those who have no one else.
“The mission statement is no one dies alone,” said Andrew Griffice, clinical chaplain at Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa.
Griffice and a team of volunteers are ready to comfort patients in their final hours who otherwise would have no one else. It is called the 11th Hour program. Griffice said it is designed to give bedside companionship to those at their most vulnerable.
“When I think about death as a living person — I work around it eight hours a day, four days a week — but I'm still scared of death,” Griffice said. “And I would be really scared to be around not only death, but be around death alone.”
Any hospital staff member can refer a patient to the 11th Hour program. Griffice said when they get a call, they know the patient is not going to get better and are typically on what they refer to as a comfort care plan.
“Meaning that they’re kind of at the end of their illness journey,” Griffice said. “They’ve gone through fighting and the various levels of what an illness will do to a body and they’re toward the end and they’re actively dying.”
Griffice and his team try to get as much information about a patient as possible before spending time with them, like finding out their favorite music or books.
“Maybe if they like the Beatles, playing a Beatles song,” he said. “If they like poetry, reading poetry. Showing that act of, ‘I see you, I’m with you and I’m here.’”
Sharp Grossmont’s 11th Hour Program has just started back up again, after a nearly three year hiatus due to COVID-19.
“That was a bummer for us because I really think it would have been a good time for our program,” said Tamera Debeliso, an 11th Hour program volunteer and a Sharp physical therapist.
Debeliso has been with the program since 2015 and said it was tough not to be there during the deadly pandemic.
“It was probably when we were most needed, it seems, because a lot of patients had to die by themselves,” she said. “Their families couldn’t come into the hospital and the nurses were overwhelmed with lots of things happening at the time. I wish we could have been there, but that wasn’t an option. Now we’re back, which is good.”
Sharp Grossmont officials are looking for more volunteers to join the 11th Hour program. The hope is to have someone available every day of the week and then aim for 24-hours a day. A majority of patients are not able to speak, but they can usually hear.
“I hold their hand and just talk to them and tell them that, ‘It’s okay,’ and that they’re safe and in a good environment and they’re being taken care of,” Debeliso said.
Debeliso did not think twice when she was asked to return to the program. For her the work is personal.
“It sort of resonated with me because I’ve been present at the deaths of three of my family members,” she said. “The common theme was we had so many family members around at the time and for someone to pass on their own without anyone there just didn't feel right for me.”
Griffice said over the last couple years he saw heartwarming scenes where nurses and therapists took time out of busy schedules to spend time with those dying alone. He jumped at the opportunity to help restart the 11th Hour program and hopes more volunteers will help it thrive.
“I wanna live in a world where there’s a little bit of hope and so I think that program is one step toward that — bringing hope back in the world,” Griffice said.
The 11th Hour program falls under the hospital’s spiritual care department.
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A new report found people of color, especially Black people are routinely stopped at higher rates than white people by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. Many of these are so-called pretextual stops and not in response to traffic violations. Then, the alleged break-in and attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband last week has not turned down the volume of vitriol. New lies and mockery have found their way into our public discourse. Plus, one East County hospital is bringing back a program that provides comfort and support to those who have no one else. And, San Diego Gas & Electric is proposing an experiment to reduce the carbon footprint of natural gas, by blending it with hydrogen. Later, on Tuesday voters in San Bernardino will face an important decision: whether to succeed from California and form a new state. And in Riverside County, one of the state’s most competitive House races pits a Republican incumbent who opposed certifying the presidential election against a Democratic challenger who helped prosecute January 6th rioters. And finally, later this month, the U.S. Men’s National Soccer team will be among the 32 teams taking the pitch in Qatar as part of the world’s most watched sporting event, the FIFA World Cup. -
One hospital in East County is bringing back a program that provides comfort and support to those who have no one else. In other news, the San Diego City Council met Monday to declare housing as a human right and discuss further tenant protections. Plus, there’s a new contemporary art installation on view at the San Diego Museum of Art.
