Ada Ferreira, End-of-Life Doula

How I began

I sat with my grandmother for eleven days in 2017 and found that I was the only person in the house who was not frightened. A hospice social worker told me that was a skill and that it had a name. I trained the following year and have been at about forty bedsides since.

Why families choose me

Hospice sends a nurse for an hour. I am the one who stays the other twenty-three. That is the plainest way to say what a doula does: I sit the vigil so a daughter can sleep, I notice the things families are too tired to notice, and I know which questions get a real answer out of a hospital at two in the morning. Earlier than that, I help people write down what they actually want while they can still say it — the directive, the POLST, who decides, and the smaller things nobody puts in a form, like whether the radio stays on. I work in Spanish and English. I am not a nurse and I do not give medical care or advice; I work alongside your hospice team and will tell you clearly when something needs a clinician rather than me.

Ownership