Category: Q&A

Granite VNA gets a new director of hospice

Meet Kristin Jordan, Granite VNA’s new director of hospice.

What is your background in health care, and what led you to this position?

I’ve been with Granite VNA for a couple months now. I have a background in home health and hospice, and I’ve done both inpatient and outpatient oncology services, here in New England and down in Nashville, Tennessee, for several years. … The beauty of nursing is that there’s certain specialties that speak to different personalities and passions and interests. I really felt a pull toward home health and hospice. … What I loved about this opportunity [at Granite VNA] is that it allows me to focus purely on the hospice program. It’s been a tremendous opportunity to get into what speaks to the empath and nurturer in me.

What do Granite VNA’s hospice services look like?

It’s really focused on creating a personalized plan of care. That includes symptom management so they’re comfortable, through medication or otherwise. It includes spiritual care … which can mean so many different things to different people. We have a nondenominational team of spiritual care individuals who offer their services. We have medical social work. We have volunteers; if someone has a caregiver who works a lot, we have volunteers who offer to go sit with them or read to them. Sometimes, depending on what the needs are, it might involve physical therapy or occupational therapy to help patients still be able to maneuver and do activities of daily living if they’re still able to. We have pet therapy and music therapy, and we’re talking about potentially adding an art therapy program, as well. Finally, we have a bereavement team that will follow up with families to whatever extent the families are interested in after the time of the passing. We don’t just say, ‘Sorry for your loss,’ and move on; we really keep our arms wrapped around those families for as long as they need that added support as they go through their grieving process.

What does your job as director of hospice entail?

My main purpose is lending guidance and support to the team. Every patient’s needs are so unique, so I help the interdisciplinary team navigate that. I’m also making sure I’m checking in regularly with my staff, because health care is a challenging, demanding field, and hospice is, in my mind, that, but far more elevated. It’s really important that my staff take the time to do self-care so that they can give all of themselves to the work that they do every day. In addition to that, it’s very important that I’m working with my fellow leaders in our various community catchment areas to really educate them on the breadth of hospice benefit. Hospice, in general, is still, unfortunately, stigmatized, and far too often, people don’t realize what services we can offer until it’s too late, and I see that as a missed opportunity.

What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your position?

The workforce shortage coupled with the ever-aging population is really challenging in our particular industry, because there’s more and more need and fewer people to do the hard work. We have to get more creative. We really have to enhance and embrace that true interdisciplinary group approach to caring for someone. It’s not just the nurse; it’s the social worker, the spiritual care, the volunteers, and the list goes on.

What do you hope to accomplish moving forward?

I simply want to see just a greater integration into the communities that we serve and build up the staff as much as we possibly can to have a have a stronger presence in the community in various forms, whether it’s having patients on our service or offering in-servicing at seniors centers or being at different community events where we can educate about what we have to offer.

What do you find most rewarding about this work?

What I find most rewarding is also what made me interested in pursuing it to begin with: being trusted to be part of what is probably a devastating and life-altering personal chapter in someone’s life — to face losing someone they love — and to be part of a team that can wrap their arms around such a tragic moment; to allow someone to die with the dignity and the respect that they deserve; and the prospect of having that family look back on what’s happened and be able to see the beauty in that nightmare. There’s no greater honor in what we do for work.

Featured photo: Kristin Jordan. Courtesy photo.

Canterbury Shaker Village has a new education manager

Canterbury Shaker Village’s new education manager, Kyle Sandler, talked about his vision for educational programs at the Village and what visitors can look forward to when the Village reopens for the season on Saturday, May 13.

What led you to Canterbury Shaker Village?

I studied American history at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. Then I attended graduate school at Dartmouth College. I did my Master of Arts and Liberal Studies and basically specialized in colonial American history and religion. While I was doing my degree there, I started volunteering at Enfield Shaker Museum as a historic preservation volunteer. Things kind of evolved, and I started doing tours while I was finishing up my master’s degree. Then they had an opening for their education coordinator position, and the board recommended me for that position. I was at Enfield Shaker Museum for eight years, getting well-versed in all things Shaker and Shaker history. I did a variety of workshops and classes, and I was in charge of an annual Shaker forum. I also taught an online class for a couple of years that kind of came out of Covid called Shakers 101. I came from Enfield Shaker Museum to Canterbury Shaker Village last October.

What does your job as education manager entail?

First and foremost, it’s to manage interpretation of the Village. I oversee our team of tour guides, and I’m responsible for maintaining and building new interpretive plans and tours that will be offered to the public. I work with our curator of collections and collections manager on a pretty regular basis … on developing new exhibits for the Village for this season and seasons to come. Other aspects of my job are setting up various educational programming, like workshops and classes … and I oversee some of the volunteer activities.

What new experiences are you working to create at the Village?

We’re going to be launching our new smartphone tour app. Basically it’s an outdoor grounds tour of the different buildings. Visitors will access the app on their smartphone, which will bring up information on the buildings and historic images. Eventually it’ll have video and audio content as well. It’s a self-guided way for people to immerse themselves in the Village and provides another option for people who don’t want to do the traditional guided tours that we offer.

What else is planned for the Village’s upcoming season?

Our first exhibit of the year is going to be Canterbury-made Shaker furniture from the collection, most of which is going to date from the late 18th to the mid-19th century, with a couple of later pieces. That’s a starting point for what we’re going to be doing over the next couple of years, which is really a deep dive into the collections here. We have — and this is a really rough estimate — about 100,000 items in the collection. Between 40,000 and 50,000 of those are three-dimensional objects that range from the late 18th century into the early 1990s, when the last Shaker sister, Ethel Hudson, passed away. The collections here are in need of a fresh look, and we’re going to do an updated inventory project. Hopefully, in the coming years, we’re going to start the project of digitizing the collection and making it more widely available. We have storerooms full of these wonderful items — some that haven’t been displayed in decades and some that have never been displayed to the public, because of space limitations.

What do you enjoy about studying and sharing Shaker history?

I’ve spent the last almost 10 years now studying Shaker furniture. That’s been [the focus of] my personal research and my passion — studying and understanding what’s happening, how Shaker furniture varies from throughout the Shaker world. The other thing I’m very interested in is Shaker leadership and internal community politics. The Shaker villages had hundreds of people, so there was a lot of interpersonal dynamics. That’s something I’m really fascinated about, understanding what it was like to be a Shaker here and the challenges of this kind of communal experience.

Featured photo: Kyle Sandler. Courtesy photo.