Meet Our 2204 ESPRIT Award Winner: Anna Jenkins

As Lead Spiritual Care Counselor for VNS Health Hospice Care, Anna Jenkins is highly attuned to what spiritual care means to each patient and how she can help them realize it.

Often, it’s not about religion. One patient she counseled was an architect, she explains, and he wanted to be the architect for his dying process through spiritual care. “He was able to make all the decisions and transition the way he wanted to, and it was beautiful,” she recalls.

Anna’s spiritual care work entails creating rituals to honor and begin the memorial process right at the patient’s bedside. For one young woman, Anna helped the family use rosewater to honor different parts of her body, thanking the young woman’s feet for all the hikes they took together, her hands for the carrot cakes she made and shared.

Research shows most people would prefer to spend their final days at home rather than in the hospital, but dying at home comes with its challenges. “There’s no call bell in the home, so our team creates the ‘call bell’ and helps the patients who are suffering,” says Anna.

End of life is a difficult time, but hospice care adds a layer of comfort because patients, families and care team members are in it together. “It can be very heavy and beautiful, and we are never alone,” says Anna. “We are a team, especially with the hardest cases. The patients and their families meet the whole team, so they know that we are all there for them. That’s why I chose to work at VNS Health. We are with you for the journey.’

Anna, who has been at VNS Health for eight-plus years, received her Masters of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and is currently halfway through a Masters of Social Work program at Columbia’s School of Social Work. Throughout, notes Anna, it is always the people she cares for who reveal to her the deeper purpose of her studies and her work: “This work makes it matter that I’m alive,” she says “and that there’s some way to be helpful to someone each day.”

To go back to the overview of the 2024 VNS Health Award Winners, click here.