Clarke had single-handedly created a unique program that is today radicalizing end-of-life care in hospitals by making volunteers available to comfort dying patients during their final hours. The program enlists hospital employees from every department – from kitchen workers to carpenters, medical transcriptionists to maintenance men — to sit with dying patients who are on their own.

Begun in Oregon, the program now operates in hospitals in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Florida, Minnesota, Idaho, Utah, Singapore and Japan. Clarke, who won a Circle of Excellence Award from a national nursing association last year, has since written a No One Dies Alone manual and distributed it to more than 400 hospitals, hospices and AIDS care facilities worldwide.
NODA is an all-volunteer, grassroots program which operates with no funding except a small grant to subsidize the printing of the NODA manual. “It is all so simple,” says Clarke, “anyone with a heart can do it.” But it took more than heart for NODA to get off the ground. It took Clarke’s vision and determination, the hospital’s strong support and, most importantly, the participation of a growing number of committed volunteers. Today, as many as 200 volunteers are on call, dispatched to the hospital at all hours by a rotating group of phone coordinators.

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