Family Experience Encouraged Moore County Woman to Volunteer with Hospice
| Date Posted: 5/12/2016
Sandra Moody has volunteered with FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care since last fall, reviewing patient charts and ensuring they have all the necessary information to be closed.
PINEHURST – As often occurs with volunteers, a personal experience encouraged Sandra Moody to begin volunteering with FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care.
Moody’s brother-in-law was briefly a patient there, and she had been impressed by the care he received and the professionalism and compassion of the staff providing it.
“I thought volunteering here would be something I really would enjoy doing, very worthwhile,” she says.
Moody joined the Hospice volunteer program last fall and now spends one afternoon a week reviewing patient charts to ensure they include all of the information necessary to be closed. It’s meticulous work that brings her to the Hospice campus off 15-501 North for three hours every Wednesday. It’s also work for which she is very well-suited.
A series of family moves related to her husband’s work with the USDA and later the N.C. Department of Agriculture had placed her in a variety of jobs, including one in medical records, that introduced her to the skills that have proved valuable to her Hospice experience.
“Sandra made one suggestion on a process that has significantly improved how we work toward chart closures,” says Hospice Volunteer Services manager Susanne Martinez. “This is just one example of how much difference a fresh perspective can make.”
Born in Guilford County, Moody met her Chatham County-born husband, Earle, when both were children. Married for 50 years this month, they moved to Moore County from Garner two years ago to be closer to one of their two daughters, her husband and their two teenage children. Their younger daughter works as a bereavement counselor in the Raleigh area.
Much of the Moodys’ time since their move to Moore County has involved helping the family of the daughter who is here establish a garden and following their grandson’s baseball games while renovating and landscaping their own home.
“We both have dirt under our fingernails,” she says. “It’s a work in progress, but we really enjoy it.”
Finding some time on her hands after a couple of years of home renovations and prefering to stay busy, Moody contacted Hospice about volunteer opportunities. After deciding that he wanted to volunteer, too, her husband started working in wheelchair maintenance at Moore Regional Hospital.
The two have always been active in their church, no matter where they have lived, and have taken a number of mission trips, doing construction work or dramatic presentations from West Virginia to Alaska and Mississippi (following Hurricane Katrina) to Vermont. They are now members of Southern Pines’ First Baptist Church, where she sings in the choir and serves on the Senior Adult Council and he ushers. Both also enjoy the fellowship of the church’s Rolling Retirees group.
The Sandra Moody volunteer story doesn’t end here, though. Finding she missed the “people contact” that her often-solitary Hospice job requires, Moody recently began volunteering at Moore Regional. She now spends Wednesday mornings assisting families in the hospital’s Outpatient waiting area. She meets her husband in the cafeteria for lunch and then reports to Hospice, where she is constantly reminded of the important service the program provides.
“It’s such a caring organization,” Moody says. “At a time like that, people need to know there is someone to hold their hand and be there. People here are so warm and caring.”
Sandra Moody has volunteered with FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care since last fall, reviewing patient charts and ensuring they have all the necessary information to be closed.
Sandra Moody has volunteered with FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care since last fall, reviewing patient charts and ensuring they have all the necessary information to be closed.
