Your Catholic Neighbor

Pat Saunders-McGuire

East Valley nurse accompanies the dying on their journey home

By Joyce Coronel | February 3, 2009 | The Catholic Sun

SCOTTSDALE — Pat Saunders-McGuire works in a field that deals with a subject many Americans avoid. The Our Lady of Perpetual Help ­parishioner and mother of three grown children cares for the ­terminally ill as a hospice nurse.

Saunders-McGuire moved to the Valley with her parents and eight sisters in the late ’60s. After receiving a nursing degree from Arizona State University, she went on to work in a hospital as a medical-surgical nurse.

“As a young nurse, I saw so many patients being treated, but no one was addressing their physical or emotional pain. Many times I was not allowed to give medicine to people who were suffering because doctors do not like to give a lot of narcotics,” Saunders-McGuire said. “If you’re not thinking that someone is dying, you’re more prone to try to cure and you don’t address the realities of death and dying,” she added.

Saunders-McGuire said her Catholic faith gave her a unique perspective on life that eventually played a part in her decision to work as a hospice nurse.

“I saw people expire in undignified ways and I stood by and could do very little. It was upsetting to me,” she said. “With my Catholic faith I looked at that and thought, ‘There’s got to be a more dignified way to help people near the end of their lives.’”

Thirteen years ago she left the hospital scene to work among the terminally ill and dying. It’s a role she considers rewarding, and she thinks some people actually live longer with hospice care because their needs are met more appropriately.

She has also developed a very high regard for caregivers, who are often the patient’s spouse or grown children.

“I have so much respect for them. They are the silent, hidden martyr-heroes,” Saunders-McGuire said. “It’s relentless, it never stops and it is a 24/7, often a very thankless and lonely job.”

The short-term care facility in east Mesa where she works frequently takes patients whose caregivers need a respite from their demanding role. Saunders-McGuire said that sometimes caregivers return from their break and decide their loved one would be better off in a nursing home. They come to the realization, she said, that they just can’t do it anymore.

Working with the terminally ill and dying, Saunders-McGuire said as she thought back over her years among them, is a character-building experience.

“What’s rewarding about my job is to be able to really address the patients’ symptoms and take care of them.” And, she added, there’s a sense of faith in her workplace; people who work in hospice almost always believe in God.

Saunders-McGuire also weighed in with her perspective on the controversy surrounding physician-assisted suicide.

“I feel like if people really knew what hospice had to offer, that may not even be an issue as far wanting to commit suicide,” she said, alluding to the fact that the combination of uncontrolled symptoms like pain and caregiver burnout may be the catalyst that drives some to consider ending their lives themselves.

“Being a caregiver is a lonely, hard job,” she said. “If they could get the support they need, it might not be an issue.”

Although most of the patients Saunders-McGuire sees are middle-aged or elderly, she recalls a 19-year-old girl who was dying of cancer.

“She was the sweetest person. She had a lot of faith and her family had a lot of faith,” Saunders-McGuire said. “She was always peaceful. In the days before her death, she kept seeing children playing and she wanted to go to that place where they were playing.”

The interactions with young people, the hospice nurse said, are rare but very rewarding, while the interactions with the families of young patients tend to be stressful. “They are distraught, and I’ve learned over the years, there’s a certain detachment you have to have, otherwise you’re not emotionally available to support them.”

How does your faith affect your work?

It really helps me understand what I’m doing there. If I’m medicating someone heavily with drugs to control their symptoms, I realize ethically I’m not trying to kill them, I’m trying to control symptoms. It keeps it clear. I tell patients the medication may hasten your death or it may make your life longer, but ethically it’s clear in my mind. It’s a difference of intent and my Catholic faith has shaped my attitudes on that.

How does your work help you grow in faith?

I think it helps because it gives you a real opportunity for penance. It’s like motherhood; you’re a servant in a culture that doesn’t like to serve, and you’re dealing oftentimes with basic needs like toileting.