How can you help North Devon Hospice celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2024?

North Devon Hospice chief executive, Stephen Roberts, looks back on 2023 and explains how you can help make the coming year one to celebrate for your local hospice…

Last year was a record one for North Devon Hospice as we continued to see our caseloads rise and work alongside the NHS to provide vital care to more patients than ever before.

As we head into our 40th year, the demand for our care is set to increase as we see our North Devon community live longer and with more complex conditions.

In the face of this upward trajectory, we have been working hard to ensure we can continue to be here to scoop up families facing their toughest times and remain responsive to patient needs both now, and in the future. So, how are we doing this?

Last year saw our seven place Bedded Unit receive a full refurbishment, which has greatly enhanced the patient environment.

This was to make it feel less clinical and much more like a home-from-home while enabling more services to be provided to patients and their loved ones.

In addition, many of the changes made have allowed us to give specialist care to patients with more complex needs.

If you haven’t had the chance, I would encourage you to explore the virtual tour of our beautiful Bedded Unit, which is available on our website.

To further address the ever-increasing caseload, we have invested in both the Community Nursing team as well as our Bedded Unit team, adding an additional registered nurse to each.

As well as providing more care, our teams will also be focusing heavily on patient nutrition as one of the greatest impacts of a life-limiting illness can be the loss of appetite, taste, and ability to swallow.

Thanks to an in-depth course, all our chefs are now trained on the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI) framework, empowering our patients to enjoy the food they love once more despite their illness.

We have also been proactively supporting our colleagues in the NHS by looking for opportunities to achieve better patient outcomes. The best example of this came during the current winter pressures when we reached out to our colleagues in the South West Ambulance Trust to tell them that if they were to be called out to an end-of-life patient known to the hospice, then they should ring us first.

This is to see if we can bring the patient straight to our Bedded Unit or deploy our Hospice to Home team to keep them at home rather than ending up in the Emergency Department at North Devon District Hospital.

As we look ahead to our special anniversary year, we would like to focus our efforts on creating a legacy for the next 40 years. A legacy for our patients, for the following generation, for the next wave of carers, and for our own financial sustainability. How? Let me tell you…

Through a fascinating school’s engagement programme, we hope to educate the next generation on death, dying, and the role of hospices, hopefully removing some of the misconceptions around what continues to be one of the biggest taboos in society.

We’ll also be launching our volunteer care programme, where we look to provide ‘bedside’ training for volunteers who may be looking at a career in healthcare.

Additionally, we will also be sharing more about the importance of gifts in wills and how they are one of the most impactful ways to ensure our financial sustainability.

Alongside all of this, there will be plenty of fun and engaging events and activities to get involved in throughout the year, particularly for local businesses who will have the exciting opportunity to join our exclusive 40 for 40 club!

Could your business raise £1,000 in our 40th year to directly support thousands of local families?

As ever, we work best when we work shoulder to shoulder to achieve the best possible patient outcomes and ensure that everyone’s life story has an ending that matters.

Despite facing a £1million deficit budget this year, I’m confident that in 2024, we can continue to work together to make this milestone year one to celebrate by making sure our care is here, time after time, for everyone who needs it.

Thank you for your incredible support, I hope 2024 is a year of kindness, compassion and happiness for you all.