Hospice Aide Job Description: Duties, Template & Pay (2026)
A hospice aide does the same personal care as any home health aide, for patients who are dying, and the difference is not in the task list. This page has a hospice aide job description template you can copy, what the work pays, and the one thing a hospice posting has to say that a home care posting does not.
What a hospice aide does
A hospice aide — formally a hospice aide or certified nursing assistant working under a Medicare-certified hospice — delivers personal care under a plan of care set by the hospice RN case manager, as part of an interdisciplinary team that includes the nurse, the social worker, the chaplain and the physician.
Personal care. Bathing, skin care, oral care, dressing, grooming, toileting and incontinence care, repositioning, transfers and feeding assistance. For patients at end of life this is done more slowly and more gently than in any other setting, and comfort takes priority over completion.
Comfort measures. Positioning for comfort rather than for schedule, mouth care for patients no longer drinking, managing the small physical details that determine whether someone is at ease.
Observation and reporting. Noticing and reporting changes in condition, pain behaviours, skin breakdown, intake and output, and signs that the patient is approaching death. The aide is usually in the home more than anyone else on the team, so the aide sees it first.
Documentation. Charting every visit against the plan of care, which in a Medicare-certified hospice is both a clinical and a regulatory requirement.
The family. Teaching a spouse how to turn someone without hurting them, and sitting with people on the worst days of their lives. This is not an add-on to the role; for most hospice aides it is the reason they do it.
Hospice aide job description template
Copy this into your ATS or job board, replace the bracketed fields, and delete what does not apply. It is written for a Medicare-certified home hospice; the customization section covers inpatient units, facility-based visits, on-call and per diem roles.
Job title
Hospice Aide [/ Hospice CNA / Certified Home Health Aide, Hospice] — [Agency], [City, ST] — [$00.00–$00.00/hr]
Summary
[Agency name] is hiring a hospice aide for our [city] team. You will visit [5–7] patients a day in their homes across [territory], providing personal care under a plan of care set by the RN case manager, as part of an interdisciplinary team. Schedule is [days and hours], [00] hours a week, [with an on-call rotation of [0] per month]. Pay is [$00.00–$00.00] an hour [plus [$0.00]/mile] — [mileage is reimbursed at the IRS rate and drive time is paid]. [Caseloads are capped at [0] visits a day. We mean it.]
Responsibilities
- Provide personal care per the plan of care: bathing, skin and oral care, dressing, grooming, toileting
- Assist with transfers, repositioning, ambulation and feeding
- Provide comfort measures appropriate to end-of-life care
- Observe and report changes in condition, pain behaviours, skin integrity and intake to the RN case manager
- Document every visit against the plan of care in [EMR system] before the end of the day
- Support and teach family caregivers in safe personal care techniques
- Follow infection control and standard precautions in the home
- Respect and support the patient's and family's cultural and spiritual wishes
- Participate in [weekly] interdisciplinary team meetings
Requirements
- Current [state] [CNA / home health aide] certification in good standing
- Valid driver's licence, reliable insured vehicle and acceptable MVR
- Able to lift and assist with transfers of [50] lbs with proper technique
- Able to pass a background check and [state registry] check
- [TB test and immunisations current — we provide]
Preferred
- [0]+ years in hospice, home health, skilled nursing or assisted living
- [Hospice and palliative care aide certification — or we will pay for it]
- [Dementia care experience]
- [Bilingual [Spanish] and English]
Pay and benefits
- [$00.00–$00.00] an hour, paid [weekly], [plus paid drive time]
- [Mileage reimbursed at the IRS rate]
- [Caseload capped at [0] visits a day]
- [Health, dental and vision at [00] hours], [401(k) with match], [PTO and paid holidays]
- [Paid bereavement support and counselling for staff — this work is hard and we resource it]
- [Paid hospice and palliative certification], [tuition assistance toward LPN or RN]
How to apply
[Apply here / text HOSPICE to 00000 / call [name] at [number]]. We reply within [24] hours.
Requirements: what is required, what is preferred, and what costs you applicants
Hospice competes for the same certified aides as home health, assisted living and skilled nursing, at broadly the same rate. It has one genuine advantage — people who want this work want it specifically — and one genuine cost, which is the emotional weight. Postings that ignore both compete on nothing.
| Requirement | What to know |
|---|---|
| Certification | State CNA or home health aide certification, current and in good standing. Medicare-certified hospices have federal training and competency requirements, so name what you provide. |
| Driving | A real requirement for home hospice and a real cost to the candidate. State the mileage rate and whether drive time is paid — unpaid drive time between five visits is a pay cut the candidate will work out in week one. |
| Caseload | The number that decides whether the job is doable. Say visits per day and say whether it is capped. Hospice aides leave over caseload creep more than over pay. |
| On-call | If there is a rotation, say how often and what it actually involves. Vagueness here is read, usually correctly, as a bad sign. |
| The emotional weight | Name it. Patients die, and the aide is often the last person to care for them. A posting that acknowledges this and describes the support you provide — debriefs, bereavement counselling, team meetings — attracts people who have thought about it, which is exactly who you want. |
| Experience | Helpful, not essential. An aide from assisted living or skilled nursing can do hospice work; what they need is orientation to end-of-life care and a mentor for the first weeks. Say what your onboarding looks like. |
| Scope | Be explicit that aides do not administer medications in most states, because candidates arriving from assisted living may assume otherwise. |
| Territory | Say the geography. A 40-mile rural territory and a dense urban one are different jobs with the same title and the same rate. |
Hospice aide duties, written for a posting
Say the visit count and the territory. Five to seven visits a day across a named area tells an aide what the day is; “manage an assigned caseload” tells them nothing and reads as evasive.
Say how the pay works end to end. Hourly or per visit, drive time paid or not, mileage rate, and what happens when a patient dies mid-week and the caseload drops. That last point is a real income question in hospice and almost no posting addresses it.
Describe the team. Who the RN case manager is, how often the interdisciplinary team meets, and who the aide calls at 2am. Hospice aides work alone in homes and the quality of the back-up is what makes it bearable.
Keep the responsibilities to eight or nine lines, and include the family-teaching and the reporting. They are the parts that make this a clinical role rather than a domestic one.
How to customize it by setting
Home hospice
The template above. Visits in private homes across a territory, driving between them. Lead with the caseload cap, the mileage and the drive-time policy.
Inpatient hospice unit
A facility shift rather than a route: no driving, more acute patients, more deaths, and a full team on site. Attracts a different candidate — often someone who wants hospice work without the car. Say the shift, the ratio and the differential.
Hospice in facilities
Visiting patients who live in assisted living or skilled nursing. The aide coordinates with facility staff, which is its own skill. Say how many facilities and how far apart.
Per diem and on-call
Flexible hours, often higher hourly rate, no guaranteed volume. Legitimate and attractive to some candidates if stated honestly. Say the minimum commitment and how shifts are offered.
Pediatric hospice
A specialist role requiring specific aptitude and support. Do not post it as a general hospice aide role. Describe the training, the team and the support explicitly.
What it costs to reach hospice aides on social
Across 553 healthcare and senior living campaigns in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark the median cost per applicant was $15.42, the middle half fell between $7.89 and $39.61, the apply rate was 16% and the CPM was $25.18 — the most expensive impressions of any sector we run. Two nearer role families bracket this market: CNA and nursing assistant campaigns ran $7.72 an applicant at an 18% apply rate, allied health and imaging $54.37 at 10%.
Where a campaign lands inside that spread is decided by the apply rate rather than the budget. Across all 891 campaigns, those converting under 10% of clicks paid a median $53.77 an applicant and those over 20% paid $4.41 — a twelvefold difference driven by the posting and the application form, not the auction. The second lever is frequency: past three impressions in a month the median cost per applicant roughly doubles. Hospice campaigns convert unusually well when the creative says what the work is rather than softening it — the people who respond to an honest hospice ad are the ones who stay.
Staffing the agency? See the home health aide, CNA, caregiver and LPN job descriptions, plus home health aide recruiting.
Writing the ad version
The description is the document. The advertisement is read on a phone by somebody who has other options at a similar rate. It needs the rate, the caseload cap, the mileage and drive-time policy, and an honest line about the work — in the first three lines. Our campaign data puts the best-converting length at 201–400 words, and for a role like this the shorter end works.
Three or four questions on the form, then call the same day. Every extra field costs completions, and the aide you want has applied somewhere else this morning.
What hospice aides earn
Home health and personal care aides had a median of $17.21 an hour, $35,800 a year in 2025, across about 4,347,700 people — the largest occupation in the country — with roughly 765,800 openings a year and growth projected at 7% or higher. Hospice aides generally sit at or somewhat above that median, and hospice-certified aides above that again.
| Comparison role | Median pay (2025) | Openings per year |
|---|---|---|
| Nursing assistants (CNA) | $20.32/hr · $42,260 | ~204,100 |
| Home health and personal care aides | $17.21/hr · $35,800 | ~765,800 |
That gap is the structural problem in hospice aide hiring and it is worth stating plainly. A certified nursing assistant working in a facility earns a $20.32 median; the same person doing home-based aide work earns $17.21. Hospice agencies are recruiting CNAs into a job that, on the federal averages, pays about three dollars an hour less and requires them to drive.
Which means the posting cannot win on rate and should not try. What hospice has instead is a set of things facility work cannot offer: one patient at a time instead of twelve, a schedule with some autonomy in it, a real interdisciplinary team, and work that people who want it want very specifically. Add paid drive time, a genuine caseload cap and mileage at the IRS rate, and the effective comparison changes considerably — but only if all of that is in the advertisement rather than discovered at interview.
The other lever is the certification. Hospice and palliative aide certification is inexpensive against the cost of a vacancy, and paying for it with a stated raise on completion converts aides from the 765,800-opening general pool into people who have chosen this speciality.
Frequently asked questions
What does a hospice aide do?
A hospice aide provides personal care under a plan of care set by the hospice RN case manager: bathing, skin and oral care, dressing, grooming, toileting, transfers, repositioning and feeding assistance, with comfort prioritised over completion. They also provide end-of-life comfort measures, observe and report changes in condition and pain behaviours, document every visit, teach family caregivers safe techniques, and take part in interdisciplinary team meetings.
What is the difference between a hospice aide and a home health aide?
The task list is nearly identical; the goal is not. Home health aides support recovery or maintenance, often toward a discharge. Hospice aides support comfort and dignity at end of life, work within an interdisciplinary team that includes a chaplain and a social worker, and carry a relationship with the family through the death. The clinical skills transfer; the orientation and the emotional support required do not.
How much do hospice aides make?
Home health and personal care aides had a median of $17.21 an hour, or $35,800 a year, in 2025, and hospice aides generally sit at or somewhat above that. The number that matters for recruiting is the comparison: nursing assistants in facilities earn a $20.32 median, so hospice agencies are usually recruiting CNAs into work that pays about three dollars an hour less and requires driving.
What certification does a hospice aide need?
A current state CNA or home health aide certification in good standing, plus the federal training and competency requirements that apply to aides working under a Medicare-certified hospice. Hospice and palliative aide certification is a valuable addition and works far better as something the agency pays for, with a stated raise on completion, than as a hiring filter.
What should a hospice aide job description include?
The visits per day and whether the caseload is capped, the territory, the hourly rate, the mileage rate and whether drive time is paid, the on-call rotation and what it involves, the scope including that aides do not administer medications in most states, the team structure and who the aide calls out of hours, the emotional demands stated honestly, and the support you provide for them.
Is hospice aide work emotionally difficult?
Yes. Patients die, aides are often the last people to care for them, and the relationship with the family is real. That should be named in the posting rather than softened, because acknowledging it and describing the support available — debriefs, bereavement counselling, team meetings — attracts candidates who have thought seriously about the work, which is precisely who stays.
Can a CNA work as a hospice aide?
Yes, and most hospice aides are CNAs. The personal care skills transfer directly. What a CNA moving from a facility needs is orientation to end-of-life care, an understanding of comfort-focused rather than restorative goals, and a mentor for the first weeks. Agencies that describe that onboarding in the posting hire more easily than those that ask for hospice experience.
Why is it hard to hire hospice aides?
Because the role competes for certified aides against facility work that pays roughly three dollars an hour more without requiring a car, and because most postings compete on rate they cannot win. The agencies that fill lead with what facility work cannot offer — one patient at a time, a capped caseload, paid drive time and mileage, a real team — and they are honest about the emotional weight.
Other job description templates
Hiring hospice aides?
You are recruiting CNAs into a job that pays less on paper. The campaign has to say what facility work cannot offer — and mean it.
Wage, employment, projection and task descriptions for home health and personal care aides (SOC 31-1121) and nursing assistants (31-1131): O*NET OnLine and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 wage data and BLS employment projections. Aide scope of practice and hospice aide training requirements vary by state and by Medicare certification status; check your state board and conditions of participation. Cost-per-applicant and apply-rate figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, 891 campaigns and 1,334 campaign-months.