On International Nurses day we caught up with Liz (not pictured), a community nurse specialist at St Margaret’s Hospice. Liz uses her passion for palliative care to help and support patients here in Somerset but she is also on call to help all over the world.
As a St Margaret's Hospice nurse specialist, Liz covers the Somerton and Langport area, supporting patients in their own homes and helping District Nurses and GPs to provide quality palliative and end of life care at home.
“Each day is different, and that’s what I love about it” Liz said.
“It’s busy, in fact its increasingly busy which I think is an effect of Covid, not direct, but perhaps an impact of the delays in diagnosis and treatments, and generally more people wishing to be at home rather than in in-patient facilities due to risk and restrictions of seeing loved ones.
“I was a Nurse Specialist in the south of Wales during the first wave of Covid and there were a number of my patients that because of the risk of infection weren’t able to have their palliative treatment, the treatments to keep their conditions stable. Because of this we are now seeing patients further along their journey than perhaps they would be if Covid hadn’t happened. The emotional and psychological impact of isolation had a huge impact on the care and wellbeing of patients receiving palliative and end of life care in the community.”
Liz doesn’t just use her passion for nursing for the benefit of patients in Somerset. She is also part of a team that could be called to support other countries in the event of a disaster or more recently an ‘outbreak’ situation.
“When I saw the impact of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa many years ago, I was really inspired by the NHS volunteers who went out and shared their knowledge and expertise,” Liz said.
“It had such an impact I decided to see if I could help too. It has been a long process, but I’ve now been on the ‘on call’ register for a few years as part of a reserve medical team with a field hospital which can be deployed within 12 hours funded by the UK Government as part of the international aid budget.
“In response to an international crisis we can deploy a field hospital and medical team straight away. There are also smaller teams who travel internationally providing training and supporting countries which has been particularly important in the Covid-19 pandemic as we have learnt about the virus at different rates around the world and that knowledge should be shared. “
Liz commits to spending two months on the ‘on call’ list and the hospice is happy to support this as there are always benefits of experience that can be used to influence our own care.
“The training I had to qualify for the opportunity was great, we had to take part in a mock deployment over two days, we camped and were just given military ration packs, we had to go through passport and visa control with actors interrogating us!” Liz added.
“Going through armed checkpoints and arriving at a field hospital dealing with several different medical emergencies. They chucked everything at us, but it was an incredible learning experience.
“I was also really fortunate to be offered a weeklong observational training experience where I went to Sierra Leone and observed the healthcare staff and their facilities, to show me what it is like outside of the UK and the NHS. This was especially eye opening and certainly makes you grateful for what we have in the UK.
Although these two roles are miles apart, Liz said that both roles have benefits to the other.
“When you witness the levels of healthcare provision, other parts of the world are dealing with it makes you very grateful for what we can provide, and it makes you realise the importance of the fundamentals of care” Liz explains.
“It is a grounding experience and makes me appreciate the way we work as a hospice and healthcare provider, having the benefit of working alongside other organisations, like the NHS.
“I was fortunate to meet a doctor who was trying to set up a palliative care service in another part of the world. Palliative care is very culture specific and the standards of palliative care and end of life care in this country are not representative of other parts of the world, it varies greatly and in some places is not accepted. It is quite upsetting to think that patients facing a life-limiting illness not receiving the care they need, to the level that this hospice provides.
When asked what being a nurse means to her, Liz said: “For me it’s always been on the cards, as a child I went to visit my grandad in hospital before he died and even at that age watching the nurses buzzing around and how they cared for him so well, I remember thinking ‘I want to do that, I want to care for people, like they did for my grandad, and become a nurse.
“I have not always worked in palliative care, I’ve had various roles since qualifying but it’s always been important to me, and have been drawn to this speciality, so I now feel really privileged to be working for such a great hospice, where the care is entirely patient centred, and everyone will bend over backwards to provide the right level of care that our patients deserve. There are a lot of challenges along the way, but I haven’t met a member of the team that won’t do whatever they can to care and support patients across Somerset.“