
Hospice of Michigan assists in training prisoners to serve as palliative care aides, and prepares them to be able to train other prisoners who come after them. Daniel Hinshaw of the University of Michigan to start the program and set into motion ideas that could improve it. The facility worked with the Palliative Care Research Center, Hospice of Michigan and Dr. hospitals offering palliative care has tripled since 2000, according to a study published in Health Affairs. The launch of the program is reflective of a shift seen nationwide in the care offered to patients with terminal illnesses.

There are about 10 to 17 prisoners signed up to receive services at Duane Waters Health Center at any given time, Dirschell said. The program is optional for prisoners, as are the therapies and services it offers. In its first year, the program provided 36 vigils for dying prisoners. “It has changed dying and how we deal with death in the department of corrections.” “It has changed everyone,” Dirschell said. The overall aim of the program is that no prisoner dies alone, and comfort and compassionate care is provided to prisoners with severe and terminal illnesses. The prisoner palliative care aides assist other ailing inmates with daily hygiene, mobility, meals and socialization. Vigils are also provided to dying prisoners, who have trained prisoner palliative care aides stay by their side until they pass. Roscoe, the facility’s compassionate care dog, sits beside his prisoner handlers. Those therapies can include visits from the facility’s compassionate care dog that started making rounds in the prison hospital in 2017, and dignity therapy, which allows prisoners to tell stories about their life and share transcribed copies with their families. It also weaves in spiritual care along with other therapies. It takes a holistic approach to meeting the needs of the state’s sickest prisoners by pairing palliative care - a team-based approach to health care that focuses on providing comfort to patients - and medical care. Egeler Reception and Guidance Center and Duane Waters Health Center. In 2016, the department started a hospice and palliative care pilot program at Charles E. Views began to shift on end-of-life care for prisoners. That led to the launch in 2014 of Eagle’s Wings, a group therapy program for prisoners with severe or terminal medical conditions. Then warden, and now Director Heidi Washington was enthusiastic about pursuing the idea. When he was approached again about the role, he said he would take it on, only if he could submit a proposal to provide spiritual care to terminally-ill prisoners.Ĭhaplain Adrian Dirschell speaks with a prisoner during an Eagle’s Wings group therapy session. “As soon as I said no and walked out the door, I felt plagued,” Dirschell said. Beginningsįacility leaders later asked Dirschell if he would serve as chaplain, tending to the spiritual needs of prisoners. “We treated them well, and we treated them medically, but they were dying alone as a prisoner in a prison hospital,” Dirschell said. He had been with the department for almost 20 years, and in that time, he had watched as prisoners at the facility aged, became ill and grappled with the realities of death.

Egeler Reception and Guidance Center and Duane Waters Health Center in Jackson when he noticed a trend that stuck out to him. F ive years ago, Adrian Dirschell was working as a sergeant at Charles E.
