Employee Spotlight: Martha Hutchinson

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Name, title: Martha Hutchinson, Home Care Case Manager

How long have you worked here?
Almost 17 years. 

What made you decide to work here?
As a new, inexperienced but older nurse, I followed the advice of my friend Wendy Winkler -- an Angela Hospice pediatric RN at the time -- to visit and consider working for Angela Hospice. Oh, what she set in motion!

What’s a typical day like for you?
Most days, plans made the day before will change after listening to report -- requiring more flexibility than I knew I possessed. A typical day involves lots of phone calls related to patients and their care. A good typical day includes regular interactions with my clinical peers. Each day includes home visits, of course, which can go as planned or can provide unexpected challenges. I sure have been exposed to many opportunities to reach outside my original comfort zone.

What is your favorite part about working at Angela Hospice?
The interactions with people facing end-of-life, in its many presentations. Most of the time, this is such an honest, frank time of peoples’ lives.

Martha receiving her 15-year service award. 
One of the very most important, long-standing satisfactions with this work is this: I get to be present at a very intimate, very graphic, very real time of peoples’ lives. And in general, even if not always, it is such a gift from the universe to be present. Not only participating in providing physical comfort, but because often enough, patients and families no longer focus on the minutiae, the crap, the superficial that most of us spend our lives doing…The lucky folks see and live out what is of the most basic importance -- love, relationships with family, friends, the spiritual, the existential. All else pales (once physical symptoms are managed).

I deeply appreciate the moments of grace I sometimes witness with patients and families as they face this final task.

What is one of your favorite memories from your time at Angela Hospice?
There’s no single memory -- there have been many over the years. Peer interactions and frank, honest experiences with families are at the core of my favorite memories.

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