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Renowned Expert on Grief Promoted to Senior Director at VITAS Healthcare Corporation; Robin Fiorelli to Lead Volunteer and Bereavement Services

Posted on: Tuesday, 10 October 2006, 12:00 CDT

MIAMI, Oct. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Robin Fiorelli has been promoted to Senior Director of Volunteer and Bereavement Services at VITAS Healthcare Corporation, where she develops, standardizes and implements VITAS' volunteer and bereavement services nationwide. Fiorelli, with 13 years at VITAS, is recognized as a national expert on issues related to grief, loss and bereavement, particularly as they are affected by religious, ethnic, racial and cultural factors.

Field experience has sharpened Fiorelli's focus on bereavement issues and forms of grief and prepared her for this expanded role.

"Grief reactions and mourning practices are influenced by culture, age, family background and even gender differences," said Fiorelli. "Staying informed about how these differences affect grieving, and understanding that there is no one way of expressing grief that is right or wrong enables VITAS to modify and strengthen services to better serve diverse communities."

Fiorelli has been instrumental in creating and developing multiple resources for use by VITAS caregivers in the field, including a toolkit on caring for caregivers, handbooks on "Children and Grief" and "Teens and Grief," bereavement newsletters, a library of Spanish-language grief resources (available at http://www.vitas.com/), and an end-of-life care toolkit for providing psychosocial support to war veterans and their loved ones.

In addition to her leadership on grief and loss issues, Fiorelli demonstrates her commitment to quality and compassionate care through her role in coordinating VITAS' multiple partnerships with under-resourced hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa under the auspices of the Foundation for Hospices in Sub- Saharan Africa. She also serves as a liaison between local VITAS programs and the VITAS Hospice Charitable Fund, an independent non-profit whose mission includes improving access to end-of-life care to those who otherwise would not be able to afford it.

Fiorelli began her career at VITAS as a medical social worker in VITAS' San Diego program, where she provided supportive counseling, crisis intervention and educational information to terminally ill patients and their families. After serving as a team manager in San Diego, Fiorelli was then named the psychosocial services consultant to all six of VITAS' Southern California hospice programs. She later returned to the San Diego program to serve as bereavement services manager before being promoted to national director of volunteer and bereavement services.

Prior to joining VITAS, Fiorelli was a medical social worker for San Diego Dialysis Services, where she coordinated kidney transplant services and provided counseling to Spanish-speaking dialysis patients. Fiorelli gained extensive knowledge in AIDS research and caregiving when she worked as an intern at St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco, helping open the first AIDS dementia unit in the country. In addition, Fiorelli wrote a resource book for women and children with AIDS that was published by the San Francisco Department of Health.

Fiorelli has won numerous awards during her VITAS tenure, including Social Worker of the Year and a National Employee Recognition Award for Excellence in Management. She also has been named to the company's prestigious Leadership Council three times.

Fiorelli earned both her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and her Master of Social Work Degree in Health from The University of California, Berkeley.

About VITAS

VITAS Innovative Hospice Care(R), a pioneer and leader in the hospice movement since 1978, is the nation's largest provider of end-of-life care. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, VITAS (pronounced VEE-tahs) operates 42 hospice programs in 17 states (Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin). VITAS employs 8,756 professionals who care for terminally ill patients daily, primarily in the patients' homes, but also in the company's 26 inpatient hospice units as well as in hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living communities/residential care facilities for the elderly. At the conclusion of the second quarter of 2006, VITAS reported an average daily census of 10,904.

VITAS Innovative Hospice Care

CONTACT: Mark Cohen, VP, Communications & Public Relations of VITASHealthcare Corp., +1-305-350-5905; or Kathie Boettrich, Vice President, Hill &Knowlton, +1-202-944-5150, for VITAS Innovative Hospice Care

Web site: http://www.vitas.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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