Clients walking back threats

Working with hospice families often means that some tense situations are encountered and conversations being initiated.

Had families work adult daycares into their journey. Nearly entirely separate from my agency, but we do write referrals over to them.

I regularly tell families that whenever a patient is traveling or from site to site, do not send anything that is easy to lose and would be difficult to replace. Leave the jewelry and favorite watch at home, the number 1 blanket or favorite clothes do not need to make the trip. I double down on this if family is not accompanying them.

Had a few situations where a patient didn’t come home with something they were sent with. I do not understand what the family thought would happen when they called the place to make threats to go there, shoot it up, hurt people, they’d pack the morgue, and they (the family) would have to be arrested if they do not see results by the end of the day.

I escalate the concerns because of safety. Suddenly, the family claims I misunderstood what the family was trying to communicate. Not that they never said those things, just that I “didn’t understand the context”.