“I go to work and there’s so much love from the staff, and I love talking to my hospice patients because they are so wise.”

Anne Koziara, a recent graduate of the Accelerated BSN Program at the Michigan State University College of Nursing, worked as a Student Nurse Associate at Angela Hospice Care Center in Livonia, Mich during her time as a student. While interested in several branches of nursing, she soon found that end-of-life care was her calling.

“I’m not feeling as fulfilled when I walk out of those environments as I do when I go into a hospice facility and I’m able to give my all,” said Koziara.

At Angela Hospice, Koziara completed a variety of medical tasks for her patients – “trach care; foley care; injections” – but she is proud of the opportunity to assist her patients as a source of comfort.

“I have had patients who have chocolate ice cream for every single meal because they can do whatever they want,” she explained. “If that’s their desire at the end of life, they can have that, or if they want me to sing songs to them, or if they want a certain kind of music or to watch TV all day, they can have that.”

Singing is one of Koziara’s favorite hobbies, and she mentioned an occasion where she sang to soothe a patient and her family.

“I offered to sing a song, and she picked Ave Maria,” Koziara recalled. “I went out into the hallway and her whole family had shown up. I sang them Ave Maria, and the patient was singing along with me. It was this beautiful moment that we were able to create together.”

Another experience with a patient confirmed for Koziara that the impact she could make on people’s lives was what drew her to hospice care nursing. 

“She would give me her pearls of wisdom that she had acquired throughout her life. She would ask me questions about my goals in life.”

Koziara recalled creating a heating pack for this patient. “She had a really sore shoulder, and we didn’t have heat packs, so I found a way to make a heat pack. I was doing all these little things because I was like, ‘Yeah, this is my job.’” 

She continued, “She told me, ‘You were one of the people that went out of their way to help me. You are going to make a great hospice nurse.’ Hearing that, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what I’m meant to be doing.’”

Koziara credits a comfort with death throughout her life for leading her into hospice care nursing and is grateful to the network she has built as a student for assisting her in pursuing this calling. 

“My clinical instructors have been really good,” she explained. “They try and ask each of us at the beginning of the semester what we’re interested in, and they would try to get me into a room with a hospice patient.”

She recalled one opportunity she had to assist in post-mortem care. “We were told that there could be two students that go. All the other students in my clinical were like, ‘Oh, Anne has to be one of them.’” Koziara attributes her level of preparation for her in hospice nursing to advocacy by her peers and instructors.

Through her work, Koziara wants to break through the stigma of hospice as a sad environment. “Yes, there are sad moments, but those instances don’t break the employees or crush us,” she explains. “It’s about providing comfort for the patients.”

“Being human has a one hundred-percent death rate,” she continued. “I wish every single human would be able to experience hospice. Hospice is simply comfort care. I will see patients on regular floors who are not curable and they’re still trying to push because they’re afraid of going to hospice.”

Overall, Koziara believes that surrounding herself with a support network in her fellow Spartan Nurses as well as opportunities to connect with patients helped her realize this was a field where she could build a career. 

“Get yourself immersed in it because this is something where you know that it’s something you want to do and you have this gut feeling,” she urges other nursing students. “The fact that I was able to be there for somebody like that was the biggest thing to me.”