"We Are All Just Walking Each Other Home": Exploring the Lived Experiences of Rural Hospice Social Workers in "Companioning" the Dying.

Social workers play a critical role on the hospice team including assessing risk and safety, advocacy, grief counseling, referral and connection to resources and providing guidance through advance care planning and advance directives. However, the voice of the rural hospice social worker is often absent from research. To address this gap in the literature, this study aimed to explore lived experiences of rural hospice social workers to better understand their role and challenges. Non-experimental qualitative research design was used for this study. Data was collected through in-depth qualitative interviews. A total of 19 rural hospice social workers participated in the study. We used a phenomenological approach focusing on the common lived experiences of rural hospice social workers and thus interviews were unstructured. Field notes and data were collected until data saturation was achieved. Five main themes were identified: (1) meaning of hospice social work, (2) role of hospice social workers, (3) vulnerability and realness, (4) self-care, and (5) rural culture. Based on these findings, we identified recommendations for hospice social work practice, research and policy, in general, as well as for rural hospice social work specifically. Future research could explore lived experiences of hospice professionals or of the dying and could also explore social worker experience of resource barriers.