There are no nursing directives for how to care for a patient’s family — particularly when the family consists of dogs named JoJo, Fancy Face and Pretty Girl. Fortunately, Hank Davis didn’t need any; he just followed his heart.
“I work with a great team and we believe in always doing what’s right for the patient,” said Davis, 50, a hospice liaison nurse with Odyssey HealthCare’s Athens location. “I would never treat a patient any differently than I would treat someone I love.”
So when a hospice patient’s only wish was to spend her last days with her beloved dogs, Davis and his co-workers made it happen.
“She was from West Virginia, but had ended up in a house in Athens and was out of money,” Davis said. “We paid for her utilities, so that she could spend her last two months at home with her dogs. I have animals and I can’t think of any place I’d rather be than curled up with them at the end.”
Davis was nominated by a friend, Rebecca Washington, who noted that Davis and his co-workers also cleaned the patient’s house, bathed her dogs and often visited bearing food. After the woman passed away, they found good homes for the dogs.
“Hank’s actions go above and beyond in order to fulfill a patient’s last wishes,” Washington wrote. “I believe he does this repeatedly and he would not consider himself a hero. I would bet that his patients and their loved ones would, though.”
Because he always loved working with people, Davis thought he’d become a social worker. His father, however, pointed out the many listings for nursing jobs in the want ads, and suggested it might make a good career.
Davis enrolled in the nursing program at Floyd Junior College, now Georgia Highlands College, in Rome. When he earned an associate degree in 1983, Davis was one of only six men to graduate in his nursing class.
After working in oncology and intensive care, Davis went back to school to earn a bachelor’s degree in 1986. He worked as a psychiatric nurse at Athens Regional Medical Center from 1990 until 2007, when they closed the unit.
Offered a job with Odyssey HealthCare, Davis decided to try hospice nursing.
“The first few weeks, I thought, ‘I can’t do this,’ but then I began to see I was making a difference in patients’ lives and their family’s lives,” he said. “You find yourself helping husbands, wives, sons and daughters.”
Davis compared being a nurse to being a preacher.
“To be a good nurse is a calling,” he said. “I know I’m here for a reason.”
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