Hospice Care Week message from our Director of Patient Care
Hospice Care Week shines a spotlight on the brilliant hospices across the UK, the incredible people who work in them, and the difference hospice care makes to patients, families and communities.
This year’s theme is ‘Not Leaving Hospice Care to Chance’ – a powerful reminder that everyone deserves access to high-quality hospice care, whoever they are and wherever they live.
At St Barnabas, we see every day what hospice care can make possible.
From bringing Christmas Day early, to helping organise and support weddings, to making an Arctic Roll from scratch so that a patient could join in with their son’s birthday celebrations – it’s about listening to what matters to each person and finding a way to make it happen.
We spoke to Becky, our Director of Patient Care, about what Hospice Care Week means to her.
“Every day I see things that remind me why hospice care is so important. From the individual level, right through to how it affects families and whole communities, you see the difference that good palliative and end-of-life care can make.
“You see it in a smile, in a hug. It’s in the look of relief on a patient’s or family member’s face when you just say ‘yes’, ‘this is what we can do to help’, or ‘we’ll do this together’.
“It’s beautiful when you see that relaxation, that response to the fact that we can make a difference.
“What I’m most proud of at St Barnabas is that it’s clear that everybody’s here for patient care. Wherever people work in the organisation, we couldn’t do it without them. We couldn’t do it without Income Generation, our retail, volunteering, finance, estates, IM&T, fundraising and marketing teams. But equally, we couldn’t do it without our nurses, AHPs, doctors and everyone involved in delivering care.
“We’re all here for the same reason, and that’s to deliver outstanding care.
“This year’s theme for Hospice Care Week is ‘Not Leaving Hospice Care to Chance’. For me, that means we’ve got to secure funding for the future because the need for hospice care is not going away. People are always going to need our care, and people are always going to need palliative and end-of-life care.
“Funding has to be robust. We need to be as ready as we can be, so that we can continue to provide the level of care Lincolnshire needs, both in the Inpatient Unit and in the community in patients’ homes, for years to come.
“Leaving it to chance means the risk of that not happening.”
Good hospice care is kind, safe and available when patients, families, carers and their wider support networks need it.
To everyone who makes our care possible, thank you from the bottom of our hearts at St Barnabas.
Without you, we wouldn’t be able to provide care to people across Lincolnshire – in their own homes, in our Inpatient Unit, and to people who have been bereaved of their loved ones.
