Tidewell Hospice: A Community of Caring

By Ryan G. Van Cleave | August 2022

Tidewell Hospice has been part of this community for more than four decades, and is well known for the high-quality, compassionate care they give to the patients and families dealing with advanced illness and end-of-life care. As a not-for-profit hospice, Tidewell relies on the generosity of people, companies, and communities to fund its many necessary services.

While it seems like all their services revolve around direct medical treatment, Tidewell actually provides a host of complementary services that can greatly improve the quality of life for patients by reducing pain, stress and anxiety while increasing joy and psychosocial healing. Their horticulture program, for example, can alleviate a patient’s feelings of depression, boredom, or loneliness by offering plants to care for, which creates a valuable sense of purpose and a living legacy. 

Animals can bring a natural joy with their selfless love, so pet therapy is an option that is also welcomed. All of Tidewell’s pet volunteers receive special training and the pets themselves are all certified and insured. And since this is Sarasota, it only makes sense that Tidewell launched a clowning program in 2001 that is recognized by Clowns of America International. The clowns in this program not only visit area nursing homes and assisted living facilities, but they also perform at community events as well. 

One of Tidewell’s most exciting new complementary services, though, is music therapy. Laura Devore, MSN, RN, Vice President of long term care hospice, notes that they hired their first certified music therapist in 2019, though the music therapy program officially launched in 2020. 

Music therapist Jasmine Ridge explains that she uses music as a tool in research-based intervention. 

“All of our interventions are used to target a specific therapeutic goal, whether that might be decreasing pain, anxiety, or trouble breathing. It might be targeting emotional processing, or anticipatory grief support for family,” states Ridge.

Ridge also notes that she views music therapy as much more than an interest area—it’s the result of focused college study, so she earned a Bachelors of Music degree in music therapy. 

“The degree is essentially almost two in one, where I had to do all of the things that a music education or performance major did, but my area also included a lot of science such as neuroscience, biology, and psychology,” Ridge adds.

In addition to passing a board certification exam, Ridge also completed a 1,200-hour, six-month internship, just as student teachers in regular k-12 schools would normally do.

Having been with Tidewell since the beginning of the music therapy program, Ridge has had her share of success stories. A recent one happened at the hospice house: When Ridge arrived, the patient was minimally responsive and had been that way for hours. The entire family of ten or more was present and tearful, but they requested the patient’s favorite hymn. Ridge, whose main instrument is her voice, began singing and playing the guitar. One verse into the song, the patient quietly passed. 

Having Ridge there to provide the requested music was beneficial for the family. Not only did they feel that it helped them connect spiritually with the patient, but they felt it helped her cross over. As Ridge says, music therapy helps “meet the patient or family where they are at with the music.”

One of the exciting projects that Ridge is using is a legacy project. She uses a stethoscope to record a patient’s heartbeats and then they might write an original song or simply choose a song that’s important to the patient and the family. The heartbeat is added into it almost like a drum in the background. 

“That’s just one type of legacy project we can do to leave behind something for the family,” Ridge says. “We also have songwriting, and we can create a video collage with songs and pictures that are important to the family. I’ve also done arts-and-crafts projects with them to create a hand impression or things like that, too, if they want.”

Like anyone who works in hospice in some capacity, Ridge does more than her basic job description. 

“I spend a lot of time with our patient families and caregivers processing what they’re going through,” Ridge says. “This speaks largely to all of hospice work, because while we’re there for the patients, the families are also going through this journey with them.”

Tidewell currently employs four music therapists—three work fulltime for hospice and one works 10 hours a week in hospice and 30 hours a week for the PIC (Partners in Care: Together for Kids), a Florida program for children with serious illnesses. The goal of PIC is to help children and their families receive the special care they need while maintaining the quality of their lives. As part of PIC’s palliative care approach, Devore says, “music therapy is an effective way to address pain as well as physical, emotional, or spiritual needs.”

While Devore has been with Tidewell for 9 years and oversees all the long term care teams, she has a special place in her heart for the music therapy program. That’s partially because for her master’s degree, she wrote about the effects of music therapy in dementia patients at the end of their lives, which shows how their pain and anxiety could be alleviated. Even though she’s an RN, she knows that while it can help, medicine doesn’t always cure everything 

“With music therapy, it just goes the extra mile to really support the person and family in a different way—an alternative way. It can even make the medicine’s effects better. We see that happen a lot,” says Devore.

As a result of the success of Ridge and the other music therapists, Devore wants to expand the program. 

“We’re very open to additional technology,” she says, “but the biggest thing is adding more music therapists because we have a 1,200-per-day average census and being able to meet the needs of all the patients who could really benefit from music therapy is important.”

For more information on Tidewell Hospice, visit tidewellhospice.org or call (855) 843-3935. To donate, visit tidewellfoundation.org or call 941.552.7546.