Nursing Insights
IRHH Director of Nursing to lead the way with Masters degree in Hospice Leadership
Sue qualified as a nurse at University College Hospital in 1975, and joined IRHH 12 years later, when the service was in its infancy, and she was returning to work after the births of her two daughters. Her role developed as the IRHH service grew, and she was awarded her specialist nursing practice degree in district nursing from the University of Hertfordshire in 1998. Sue was appointed Director of Nursing for IRHH in 2000.
Sue leads a team of 50 nurses at IRHH, which cares for around 1,000 patients a year across the Chilterns area of Herts and Bucks. She is chair of the National Forum for Hospice at Home and liaison lead for Mount Vernon Cancer Network. Sue has also been engaged in academic research to create a definitive model for hospice at home care, and in 2010 will become one of the first recipients of the new master's degree in hospice leadership from the University of Lancaster .
For her dissertation on the hospice at home model, Sue carried out quantitative and qualitative research across all hospice organisations in this country that provide hospice at home care. She identified eight core elements for the service: practical hands-on care, 24-hours on-call, specialist advice, rapid response, respite, training for professionals, training and support for carers, and psychological support for carers and patients.
Sue explains: "I am often asked at conferences to explain the model for hospice at home, what it should look like, and I also receive six or seven calls a year from people wanting to set up something similar. Through the national forum we are working to put hospice at home more fully on the national map so it is important to define exactly what it is.
"At IRHH, we add an extra dimension of care that wouldn't be available if we did not exist. We put in many more hours with our patients than district nurses are able to do. If you cannot put in those hours, then the patient cannot stay at home, but will have to be admitted to hospital."
The charity expects demand for the IRHH nursing service to increase dramatically over the next five years, as the service becomes more widely known and the government relies more heavily on the voluntary sector. Patient numbers increased by eight per cent over the past year, and IRHH nurses responded to 1,710 out of hours calls during the year, of which 694 resulted in a visit, almost two a night.
For Sue, the 24-hour on-call element of IRHH's service is central. "This is what makes us special. Other professionals sometimes tell us we are too available, but our patients have always said that they find it scary to call someone out at two in the morning. If they do, it's because they need us and that's very important."
Hospice at home, for Sue, is a passion. "It gets into your soul because you know you really do make a difference," she says. "I love developing the staff, and seeing them do well, and then I have the strategic role working with other services, and the national role of promoting hospice at home. It's a fantastic job."
