The UAB Center for Palliative and Supportive Care has teamed up with Heartstrings Creative Co. to help patients and families create meaningful keepsakes for coping with bereavement. The collaboration supports innovation in legacy-building, which has become a key part of modern palliative care.
Older adults and patients with advanced or life-threatening conditions receive compassionate and dignified end-of-life care from the team at the UAB Center for Palliative and Supportive Care, which also provides survivorship care. An important part of this care is legacy-building, which is a way for patients to pass along stories, traditions, wisdom, and memories to loved ones.
Letters, photo albums, and voice recordings are just a few examples of such keepsakes. Research shows that legacy-building efforts can reduce stress for caregivers and increase social interaction for patients.
Among other products, Heartstrings Creative offers unique keepsakes that feature a recording of the patient’s heartbeat, which serves as the “beat” of a song or spoken message. Recordings can be stored in framed lyric prints, stuffed animals, or digital formats.
The company was founded by former UAB Medicine employees and board-certified music therapists Kim Hamrick and Mary Cleveland. They have 20 years of combined experience working in hospice and palliative care settings, as well as newborn intensive care units.
The value of legacy-building
This new collaboration stems from funding provided by UAB Palliative Care for 50 legacy projects. To better manage the large number of projects, Heartstrings Creative trained UAB counselors, social workers, students, and volunteers to record heartbeats and capture voice messages.
Rodney Tucker, M.D., director of the UAB Center for Palliative and Supportive Care, describes the Heartstrings initiative as a “tremendous expansion of our legacy-building service.”
“Kim and Mary have a history of doing great work at UAB in their earlier careers, and we are proud to have helped incubate their Heartstrings project when they were here,” Dr. Tucker said. “So, it’s especially exciting to now be among their first collaborative partners.”
Dr. Tucker says it’s hard to overstate the value of legacy-building.
“These recordings allow patients to speak in their own voice, which is an especially strong aspect of memory,” he said. “It’s comparable to the familiar experience of hearing loved ones in a voicemail recording long after they have passed. We had an elderly patient who recited a poem from memory, and you could hear her heartbeat in the background. It’s moving, it’s profound, and it is unique to each patient and family.”
Click here to learn more about palliative care at UAB Medicine.