When the patient mentioned his love for a rare flavor of old-fashioned soda, nursing assistant Nora Navas, CNA, listened closely. The next day, when she walked into his room with the familiar glass bottle, the gentleman’s face broke into a smile.
“Bring us two glasses of ice,” he said. “We’re going to share this soda.”
Nora is part of the team at the HopeHealth Hulitar Hospice Center, where patients with complex needs spend the final days and hours of their life. As a nursing assistant, she offers many types of care to patients and families — including support that is sometimes hard to put into words. In this case, that meant coaxing her patient to talk about his fondness for old-fashioned flavors, and giving him one more chance to split a cold soda with someone who cares.
“For many patients, we may be the last people they see, the last hand they hold,” says Nora. “Sometimes it’s just one little thing that makes a big difference.”
> Learn how to get started with hospice care.
The little things
Nora came to HopeHealth at the urging of her sister, who’d been part of the team and thought Nora would love it. By then, Nora had already spent decades caring for people in nursing homes and as a personal caregiver. When she arrived at the Hulitar Hospice Center, it felt different. Her sister had been right.
“Since the first day I started working here,” Nora says, “I saw how everybody really helps each other.”
In her role, she works alongside nurses through 12-hour shifts — helping patients get washed, repositioned, dressed, and comfortable. Nursing assistants spend more continuous time at the bedside than almost anyone else on the care team, making them crucial as an extra set of eyes and ears for the nurses and doctors. Colleague Justin Millan, RN, CHPN, describes watching Nora work: “In the room, she’s dialed into the patient’s needs — paying attention to cues from their body language, their hands, their eyes, their facial expressions. She talks quietly to the patients and reassures them. She does all this with her unique, quiet, very dignified bedside style that’s distinctively Nora.”
“I want patients and families to feel like this is their home,” Nora says. “I always ask them, ‘What do you like? Is there anything that you want? What would make you more comfortable right now?”
One patient loved Western movies, so Nora would talk about them during his care — old films, old TV shows, anything that sparked his interest. For a little while, his pain and worry receded into the background. Another patient admitted he was craving Kentucky Fried Chicken. She told him not to worry: The next day she picked it up for him on her way to work.
“A lot of people don’t have families around them, and they don’t really have much company,” Nora says. “I always try to give those patients a bit more time.”
Her colleague Carmen DaCunha, RN, has watched this up close.
“Our patients don’t have long, so you want to make their last days or their last hours the best that they can be. Nora’s somebody that you can rely on to do that,” says Carmen. “She puts herself in her patient’s shoes.”
Families feel the difference too. At the Hulitar Hospice Center, loved ones are welcomed at any hour, given blankets and chairs and whatever they need to stay close. Their hospice teams help make them as comfortable as possible — and Nora is known for being able to sense just what someone needs, whether that’s quietly arranging the room or checking in on a son or daughter who hasn’t slept. More than once, she’s held the hand of a spouse whose partner has just passed away, offering to sit beside them through that moment.
“Quite often we get letters after someone has passed talking about how much the care has meant to them,” says Virginia Magnan, RN, director of the Hulitar Hospice Center. “Nora’s name comes up consistently as a person who has provided care that has made a profound difference.”
> Read: Seeing hospice differently: One visitor’s experience at the Hulitar Center
Nominated by her colleagues
This past spring, Nora’s colleagues nominated her — in writing, in detail, from every corner of the unit — for HopeHealth’s Spirit of Hope Award, the organization’s highest annual recognition for a CNA.
“Every day she pours her heart into her job,” said one team member.
“Nora cares for every single patient as though they are her family member,” said another.
She won, and was honored at HopeHealth’s gala alongside the organization’s 50th anniversary. Even as she was accepting the award, she was reflecting on what matters most: the patients and families.
“At the end of each day, I don’t want to go home thinking that maybe I was able to do more,” says Nora. “I want to go home and say: I did my best, I helped somebody. I gave them a few moments of love.”