Jamie Nunes 

Program Administrator at Broad Reach Hospice

Jamie Nunes, Program Administrator at Broad Reach Hospice, became a nurse more than 40 years ago and, as she puts it in modest fashion, her career has embraced “a wide variety of things.”

Her hospital work began in cardiac critical care and medical surgery suites, and evolved into more management and office responsibilities. “As kind of a fluke, I took a temporary position at Visiting Nurse Association off-Cape, and that’s how I first got involved in home care,” she recalls. That was 30 years ago. She came to Cape Cod in 1994 to continue that focus, working with the VNA here for 15 years, six of them as a team leader. In 2014, she made the move to Broad Reach.

“I was the Clinical Services Director at Broad Reach Hospice for seven years, though I did return to a case manager position and returned frontline care for a while.” In October 2022, she was promoted to administrator.

Her responsibilities include overseeing a team of 50+ people, ranging from front office administration to admissions, nursing staff, home health aides and social workers, quality improvement and education, and volunteers. She can step in as a manager on call, and given her extensive hands-on professional experience becomes a resource for advice on patient care and best practices.

“Hospice is clinically driven, but really very much heart driven as well,” says Jamie. “We build and keep building relationships with our clients and their families as well as our care partners. And our work can be unpredictable; for a family and a patient at the end of life, we need to be comfortable with that, and remain flexible.

“One thing we do well is we keep our caseloads low enough so nurses can spend the time they need at a moment of crisis. Our model is not along the lines of, ‘You must see six patients a day.’ We’ve been successful doing it this way and it helps motivate the staff to give their very best. If there’s a real need for one patient, that provider can call the office and we’ll to our best to be supportive as they do that important heart work and head work.”

Jamie and her husband have three adult sons who live off-Cape, and she’s “a proud grandma of three.” Two cats keep them company at home, a fun counterpoint to the satisfaction of work.