We say it often: “At Hillcrest Healthcare, everyone matters.” This includes our staff, residents, patients and their families. Our compassionate, highly trained and dedicated staff members are an extension of patient and resident families, and it warms our hearts when we hear words of gratitude from a patient’s family.
We recently received a letter addressed to the entire staff of our Island Home community. We share part of the letter below (portions omitted to protect patient privacy) both to encourage our teams who work tirelessly to serve our residents and patients – and provide a perspective to our readers from a Hillcrest Healthcare patient family.
To the staff at Island Home,
“Thank you” just does not seem to be enough to express how grateful we are for the professional and loving care you gave our mother. We know caring for patients is a team effort of many departments, so we will not even try to mention specific names of individual staff members because we would not want to forget one single name. We thank each and every one of you.
We understand what a challenge it must have been to become your patients’ only human contact during a yearlong pandemic. We looked forward to our “window” visits with her. Her nurses cheerfully accepted our frequent phone calls inquiring how she was doing. You kept us up to date on treatment and answered all of our questions and concerns.
When it became safe for in-person visits, you welcomed us in to see Mom and give long-awaited hugs. We will always remember spending her birthday with her when she surprised us by taking some steps. We were so proud of her. When it was her time to leave this Earth, you allowed us to sit with her and hold her hand for as long as we needed to say goodbye. We will never forget your kindness and gentleness at that sad time for our family.
We will always have only good things to say about the wonderful care and people at Island Home. May God bless you all.
We are humbled when patient families from across our three communities take the time to thank us and provide feedback about the level of care we provide. Our mission is to respect, preserve the dignity of, and celebrate the lives of those we serve – and our teams strive to live out this mission every day.
If you would like to learn more about Hillcrest Healthcare or one of our three Knoxville communities, visit www.hillcresthc.com.