Hello, my name is Lizzy and I am a Nurse Specialist for End of Life Care.
My role sits alongside the Palliative Care Service (PCS) but functions differently to that of the Nurse Specialists in Palliative Care who carry clinical caseloads attending wards to provide hands on care to patients.
My role is about understanding the end of life care that is delivered across Newcastle Hospitals by all adult teams to patients and their families/friends with and without the input of PCS.
Part of my role is to ensure national and local guidance to support good end of life care is embedded within our organisation, we have systems in place to make this guidance fits for us at Newcastle Hospitals and monitoring compliance with this through regular audits and surveys.
Rounds have audits and surveys of staff/families have led to many quality improvement initiatives over the years including the introduction of the role of dedicated healthcare assistants to support dying patients and their families/friends and the setting up of A Gift of Kindness Fund.
My role is very dynamic to whatever the priorities around end of life care are on a national and local level so I work very closely with the Senior Nurse and Clinical Director for Palliative and End of Life Care developing and actioning strategic priorities including:
- education/training for the workforce around end of life care,
- digital developments to ensure patients recognised to be approaching the end of life have their care coordinated across services and
- learning from incidents/complaints and bereaved families.
Tell us about your NHS career
Nursing was always my aspiration for as long as I can remember. My mum has a collection of pictures of me dressed up as a nurse and as soon as I left school, I went to get the qualifications to start my nursing studies at Northumbria University while gaining clinical experience in a local residential care home.
Since qualifying in 2012 my career has predominately been spent in medical wards before joining the palliative care service 7 years ago where I have grown as a nursing leader.
During my time at university studying to be a nurse my grandma was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer with a very short prognosis.
With the amazing support of all the healthcare professionals both in the hospital and the community a rapid discharge home for end of life care was organised where she was surrounded by her family in her own home until she died peacefully.
This mapped out my next steps in nursing working towards palliative care and when a temporary secondment opportunity became available, I jumped at the chance.
I have spent the last 7 years developing both clinical skills providing specialist palliative care to patients and strategically leading improvements in our organisation to improve end of life care for patients, those important to them and the staff delivering this care.
Tell us your aspirations for your role
Joining up my passion as a nursing leader for improving services in end of life care and developing digital systems the organisation have supported me to embark on a Florence Nightingale Digital Leadership Scholarship.
Since starting the programme I can fully appreciate now why it was described as a ‘life changing opportunity’ by so many and can see already the change in me both personally and professionally.
Digital developments in palliative and end of life care really excite me and the potential opportunities to optimise digital technology to enhance the experience of patients/families and staff. My project looks to develop a digital version of the Caring for the Dying Patient Document and implement a ‘Comfort Observations’ option within the E-Observations system.
The project aims to improve the experience of staff making completion easier and more joined up by being within the electronic patient record and in response to audit provide additional prompts to record those areas we commonly miss.
For patients/families the observations system will provide the prompt to record regular checks of physical, emotional, practical and spiritual wellbeing real-time and prompt a senior review if things are not well managed.
