Staff at Cumbria’s hospices have been presented with flowers and plants to thank them for their tireless work during the pandemic.
As coronavirus gripped the UK, organisations like Hospice at Home Carlisle and North Lakeland and Eden Valley Hospice faced massive challenges.
Last month, each hospice – alongside Hospice at Home West Cumbria, in Workington – was given £15,800 by The Cumberland on behalf of its affinity account savers.
Julie Boothman, nurse team lead at Hospice at Home Carlisle and North Lakeland, says one of the biggest challenges over the last year was no longer being able to give a comforting hug to patients.
“When you see somebody in distress you want to comfort them and the way you do that is by holding each other, but of course all that stopped,” she said.
“This is quite an alien concept to our nurses, who are practised in therapeutic touch.”
Being dressed in PPE also caused difficulties for nurses and patients alike.
“We rely a lot on watching body language and picking up visual cues, especially when a person can no longer communicate,” said Julie.
“This is much harder when you’re wearing a mask and it’s particularly tough for those people who are hard of hearing and can’t lip read.”
Julie says she has nothing but admiration for the nurses, who provide end of life care for about 20 people at a time in patients’ homes.
“They’ve excelled in every area possible and provided that holistic, dignified care to the patients; they’re just taking everything in their stride and I feel quite emotional when I think about it,” she said.
Susie Bulman, who is a lymphedema specialist for the hospice, usually treats people with both cancer and non-cancer related lymphedema in clinics across its service area or within their own homes.
However, this work was postponed for the early part of the pandemic, with Susie working alongside the nursing team providing end of life care.
Although COVID-19 has created a backlog of appointments in some areas of care the service has now fully reopened to treat people living with lymphedema – a condition related to an impairment of the lymphatic system which leads to swelling of the limbs, trunk, head and neck.
“Although challenging, it was a privilege to be part of the nursing team and get that different perspective,” said Susie.
“These patients would normally be surrounded by visitors and relatives, but this couldn’t happen so it made what we were doing even more important.”
Suzanne Garbarino-Danson, clinical lead at Eden Valley Hospice, said restrictions on visitor numbers and hours had been hard to deal with for patients and staff.
“It’s had a real detrimental effect for patients, having to restrict who they can and can’t see,” she said.
“Fortunately we’ve started to release some of those restrictions over the last couple of weeks and that’s made a huge difference to patients’ emotional, spiritual and social wellbeing.”
Social work and family support team lead Wendy Ashton says her team had to become experts in online communication to continue supporting patients.
Usually they offer psychological and social support, which involves everything from helping people plan for funerals to organising trips home or even weddings.
“We’ve had to become used to doing lots more on Zoom or Whatsapp during the pandemic,” says Wendy.
“We had one patient who wanted to see home for one last time and ordinarily she would be able to go home. But instead we got the family to film inside of the house and we put it on the laptop in her room so she could watch it whenever she wanted.”
Each year The Cumberland donates an amount equivalent to one per cent of the average total balances of all its Affinity Accounts to the hospices.
This year it also donated Eden Valley Angel plants to staff at Eden Valley Hospice and bouquets to staff at Hospice at Home Carlisle and North Lakeland.
Phillip Ward, brand manager at The Cumberland, said: “The work these hospices do is amazing every year, but their dedication over the last 12 months in particular has been just breathtaking.
“We’re so grateful to them and to our generous account holders and we’re proud to be able to make this donation to help continue the wonderful work they do.
- Our sister titles The Cumberland & Westmorland Herald and the Keswick Reminder have launched a £10,000 appeal for Hospice at Home Carlisle and North Lakeland.
Find out how you can help support the appeal and raise much needed funds here.
