VALDOSTA — The team at Serenity Palliative and Hospice Care is on a mission to provide holistic health care to patients in a peaceful, comfortable and dignified manner.
Serenity Palliative and Hospice Care began serving Valdosta and the surrounding areas in April as a branch of Atlanta Metropolitan Hospice.
It consists of an administrator, assistant administrator, chaplain, social worker, certified nursing assistant and an office manager. Their specialty is palliative and hospice care, serving the patients’ physical conditions and spiritual needs.
“With hospice care, the patient has been diagnosed with six or less months of life, while with palliative care it’s indefinite time,” Dale Frier, assistant administrator, explained.
Serenity attracted Frier to become part of the team because when his mother was dying, the nurses eased her emotional and physical pain and made their last moments together a positive experience. Frier was then determined to do the same for other people who are in a very critical phase of their lives.
Ebony Scruggs, administrator, joined Serenity because she believes it’s important to educate others about the death process. She said patients should perceive death as a natural continuum and it does not have to be the worst experience for them.
Yolanda Payne, chaplain at Serenity, resigned from being a hospital chaplain a couple of months ago.
“Hospice here was giving me a strong call to take care of the patient,” she said.
“To me hospice is a ministry, a job I do daily, and I feel like I’ve been called to give spiritual guidance and support to the terminally ill.”
Serenity specializes in pain management for the terminally ill, and according to Frier, “50 percent of our clients got better and got off hospice.”
The hospice office is located at 1205 Baytree Road, Suite 5.
For more information, call (229) 241-8338, send a fax to (229) 241-8353 or e-mail serenityphc@gmail.com. It is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and has a person on call 24/7.
Q: Do you provide any other services at Serenity?
A: Frier: Here at Hospice, a lot of things that are available to people that they are unaware of that help their needs that other programs can't. For example, when we pick up a patient and let's say they need oxygen, we pay for it, and we pay for the pain medicine. A lot of services come under our umbrella.
Q: Who else is part of the Serenity team?
A: Frier: Traci Carr is our social worker, Shanika Morris is our certified nursing assistant, and Tierra Deberry is the office manager. We also have two doctors on staff. Dennis Thomas is the medical director, and Alberto Garcia is the assistant medical director.
Q: What is unique about your service?
A: Payne: It’s more of a holistic approach, we are going on a spiritual level, and we actually connect the being to the process.
Scruggs: We develop a relationship with the family and we are like friends. We put more into it than just a job. I would call it a ministry.
Frier: We are a small group and provide more personalized service, and the home office allows us more leeway to provide individual and personalized attention within our scope.
Business
Related Photos
-
The staff of Serenity Palliative and Hospice Care, which is located at 1205 Baytree Road, Suite 5. Jonathan Chick
-
Chaplain Yolanda Payne works at her desk at Serenity Palliative and Hospice Care. Jonathan Chick
Focus On: Serenity Palliative and Hospice Care
- Business
-
-
Valdosta Shared Office Space
VALDOSTA — Though Valdosta Shared Office Space is not new to Valdosta, it is newly green. The first and only shared office space in Valdosta owned by Gino Fina, just became the first Downtown Valdosta business to work with the Georgia Cities Foundation’s Green Communities Fund to implement environmentally friendly, energy-efficient improvements, reducing energy consumption upwards of 50 percent. -
Downtown businesses to be mobbed this week
A few years ago, when everyone started talking through social media, flash mobs became the new in thing to do. Primarily in the big cities, although VSU did their own a year or two ago, a designated place and time would be set and masses of people would descend on these sites, sometimes dancing, sometimes singing, sometimes acting obnoxiously.
-
Keep tails wagging when your budget is lagging
I have a problem. Though I am a tight-wad when it comes to spending my money, I cannot resist the calling to buy adorable toys, collars and, yes, even clothes for my three cuter than all get out fur babies.
-
The Valdosta Mall: Revamped and Ready for Business!
VALDOSTA — The Valdosta Mall has made tremendous strides since its rebranding away from Colonial Mall in 2007 and it’s refocus in 2008 when it made a move from serving the community to being a part of the community.
“We had taken for granted our place in the community for a long time,” said Jerry Weller, general manager of the Valdosta Mall. “We don’t do that anymore.” -
Keep your clothes looking fab to avoid looking drab
As I get older, I’m beginning to learn that there are more important things than clothes. Ugh! It pains me to even form that sentence; however, it’s true.
-
Business This Week: Happy Mother’s Day!
Today is the one day a year dedicated to celebrating mothers, although we all use their guidance and wisdom every day. But for this one day, their sacrifices, kindness, love, and advice are recognized, hopefully, by the children they raised or helped to raise. It might not even be those born to them, as most mothers don’t limit their love and it flows over onto their children’s friends, family members, and the children they influence in the classroom, in Sunday school and in volunteer activities.
-
Downtown will have a new beat this week
The Brown Bag Concert Series produced by Valdosta Main Street will begin again on Monday and last all week.
-
Valdosta Regional Airport: Flying Valdosta to the Top
There are 104 publicly owned, public-use airports — nine commercial service and 95 general-aviation airports — in Georgia. Airports are significant to the state’s economic infrastructure and essential to transportation of goods and people. A single airport can support various diversified industries such as technology, manufacturing, distribution, agriculture and tourism.
-
Brittany's Budget Diary: Be Green to Save Green
“It’s not easy being green,” once said Kermit the Frog. No offense to Kerm, but it is in fact quite easy being green. I know because I am incredibly green.
-
Propex: Global Presence, Local Roots
VALDOSTA — Not every company sets out to build a better community, a better world and a better future. However, not every company is Propex.
Propex is known as a leader in building and rebuilding key infrastructure all over the world. Products made at Propex are used to protect hillsides, highways and waterways from damaging erosion by combining engineered fabrics with natural vegetation rather than broken rock. - More Business Headlines
-
