Staff Spotlight: Ruth Helle

Meet Ruth Helle

March is Social Work Month and the perfect opportunity to appreciate Ruth Helle for her 10 years of service to Cascade Health Hospice, Palliative Care and Pete Moore Hospice House. Her vast experience as a social worker brings a deeper layer of wisdom that is an asset to our hospice and palliative care patients. She has mastered bringing a peaceful presence into stressful situations, with the capacity to hold space for those who are deeply in need of her support.

Ruth has always been curious about human behavior. She spent many years as a medical social worker in hospitals and nursing homes, yet finds hospice work much more rewarding. She enjoys the deeper relationships that are built with hospice patients and families through personal, ongoing connections. “I’m grateful to do this work and can’t imagine not being in a helping profession,” she says. “This is one of those professions where you feel almost every day like you have helped somebody." 

Families depend upon Ruth to help them navigate and process through every stage. When a family brings their loved one onto hospice, Ruth dives deep into learning about who she is caring for. How did they live? What was important to them? Did they ever talk about their death? She walks through the history of their life and envisions them at every age. Ruth shares all she learns with the rest of the hospice team so they can provide the most personalized care. She offers ongoing emotional and practical support to the family with reassurance, education and resources. 

Ruth recalls an experience from early in her Cascade Health career that still gives her goose bumps with its beauty: a death that felt like a birth. The bed of the matriarchical woman was surrounded by family members who showered her with love and support as if she were birthing a child. Ruth has witnessed again and again that the love and kindness you give in life, you receive during death.