INTERVIEW
we have spent much of this year contracting health
insurance companies so that they help cover our work.
How did you put your team together to perform this
demanding job, what is its structure and professional
qualifications?
I am quite surprised. It may be thanks to the positive energy
of the idea of hospice care and the help to people in
the terminal stages of a disease that the multidisciplinary
team who work in our hospice are the most amazing
people. We started with a nurse and a single car; now
there are 30 of us in the core team, 15-20 collaborators
(volunteers and part-time job employees), and we share
eight cars. There are physicians (specializing in adults
or children), nurses, social workers, physiotherapists,
psychologists, psychiatrists, and we cooperate with two
priests, a lawyer, a notary, etc.
A great part of the team consists of employees who
work in fundraising, collecting funds for the medical
team.
Ondrášek was the first hospice to win the accreditation
to educate employees. How many experts in palliative
medicine do you educate annually? Are there many
applicants for this job?
We received the accreditation, the licence to provide
education in Palliative Care from the Ministry of Health
of the Czech Republic. We have also applied for
accreditation in lifelong education in medical care. We
have established our own training centre with the aim
of developing expert education in home hospice care
and palliative medicine with both experts and the lay
public. We educate our own employees and provide
internships and practice to doctors, medical staff, social
workers, and medics in this centre. In 2017, we trained
103 medical workers, 23 social workers, and provided
14 internships for doctors, nurses and social workers.
In addition to the Mobile Hospice, you run Stationary
Hospice for Children. What are its prospects and
capacity?
The Stationary Hospice for Children is the dream of help
to families with ill children come true. The family can
bring their child for the necessary time when the child is
looked after by a doctor, nurses and a physiotherapist.
The staff provide the medical care and expert treatment
(i.e. inhalation, PEG tube care, tracheostomy, etc.) as
well as entertain the kids to make them feel better. The
Stationary Hospice works from 8am to 4pm, allowing
the family to have a rest or go to offices, etc.
In 2018, the Regional Government awarded your
work with the Lady Business award in the “Non-Profit
Organizations” category. What does this success and
award mean to you as a human and a manager?
I am very happy, however, personally I do not
overestimate the award for me; it is an award for all the
team. Everybody must understand that we are still not
able to pay our team the money we would like to and the
sum they deserve. We therefore employ mostly people
who consider this job their mission, who are willing to
put the issues of hospice care and help to others ahead
of themselves. So I am really happy that the idea of
people helping people wins in our case, which is the
most important message in the present world, even
though it may sound like a cliché.
Do companies of our region support your project to
show social responsibility? What can an enterprise do
to help you?
Yes, they do, they support us a lot. Without gifts, grants,
endowments, support from businesses, individual
donors, the Ostrava City Council, the Government of
Moravian-Silesian Region, municipalities, foundations,
and others, we would most probably not be able to
exist. I cannot give you a full list of our donors, but we
are very, very grateful to every single one of them. Gifts
from businesses represent 15% of the total finance.
However, there are various other means of support we
receive from businesses: from the gift of money and
raising money to the purchasing of medical aids (e.g.
electric adjustable beds). Some participate in projects:
contributors may choose from projects and see who
receives their money; this method is proving to be
extremely popular these days.
We’ve organized a few fundraising events, e.g. Daruj
papuče (“Put them in their slippers”), the Doma
(“Home”) campaign, etc., more of which is presented at
www.mhondrasek.cz, as well as on Facebook and other
social networks. Our campaign to raise funds to buy us
another car was very successful as it provided enough
money to buy two vehicles.
Even though legislation gave hospice care the code
in the Medicare Rate Book since January 1, 2018,
the contracts and actual payments are still at the very
beginning, and we already know for sure that these
payments will not yet be sufficient to cover enough of
our operation to enable us to provide our services for
free.
“ ... the idea of people helping people
wins in our case…
”
What legislative changes does Ondrášek need to work
better?
As the Medicare Rate Book has listed hospice care since
January 1, 2018, which we struggled for a few years over,
we nowadays primarily need to improve our contracts
with insurance companies to cover the ambulance
room of palliative medicine, and a physiotherapist.
I have already mentioned that we provide these services
for free, and it is our job to raise the funds to cover the
costs.
Do you have any free time left for relaxation and
leisure? What recent phenomena have made you
happy?
I enjoy playing sports. I love going skiing in Italy.
As for what makes me happy, it is each and every item
of good news. There is so much negativity coming
from the mass media. Yet the principle of humanity is
in helping one another, and all acts of kindness deserve
more media room. You would undoubtedly be surprised
how much good there is in people, and how a single
action may start a great snowball of help.
Mobilní hospic
Ondrášek
Text:
redakce
Foto:
archiv
Mobilní hospic
Ondrášek, o.p.s.
a Aleš Luzar
POSITIV ǀ 4/2018 51