Working Christmas Day at hospice with sick children and bereaved families
IT WILL BE ALANA’S SECOND AT RAINBOWS
A HOSPICE nurse has explained how she will be looking after bereaved families during the festive period this year instead of celebrating with her own family.
Alana Ray, 31, is a band six nurse at Rainbows hospice, which helps terminally ill children and young people and supports a number of families across Derbyshire.
Across the year, Rainbows has helped many local families, including Sam and Alex Wilson, who have a lifelong muscle disease, and Matt and Rebecca Chapman, who sadly lost their baby after five months.
Now, Alana has spoken about how the charity will be supporting its families over the Christmas period.
This includes the end-of-life patients who will be receiving support over the festive period.
She said: “We are open to end-oflife and post-bereavement, and it just depends who we have in and we just cater for their needs and exactly what they want from Christmas.
“From the time they are in we work as closely as we can to make it as comfortable as it can be for them.
“The build-up to Christmas is quite nice, we try and fill it with fun and activities for staff members and children that are here at the hospice at the time.”
Alana explained how the hospice, which caters for short-stay residents as well as end-of-life patients, has a smaller capacity over Christmas.
Its services are solely dedicated to families needing end-of-life care and bereavement support at that time.
She added: “It’s been quite nice this year because we’ve been able to do things like having festive food together in the dining room, and it’s been a little bit nicer this Christmas than last Christmas.
“Unfortunately there are still things that we can’t do because of Covid, but we have had virtual Christmas parties for families at home, and a Santa who has been making regular visits, which has been nice.
“At Christmas time, on the main Christmas days, it’s a quieter time at the hospice because we don’t have our short breaks in, so over the main days it is quieter and we’re just there to offer as much support as we can to the families that are in.
“It’s just about trying to make it as nice as possible for those families.”
Alana, who will be working on Christmas Day for the second time, said the staff who work at the hospice always make it as fun as possible for the families and other staff.
“We’ve got a really lovely team, and you know, there are decorations all around the hospice, and we have an elf on the shelf hanging around for the children,” she said. “It is a nice place to work, there is a lot of joy about the place and we do as much as we can to keep people as happy as possible.
“We do have quizzes that go around for the staff and it’s just really nice to be able to do Christmas activities for the young people we’ve got in.”
Despite working on Christmas Day when millions of others won’t be, Alana, from Leicestershire, enjoys her work and explained that she will be working a shorter shift so she can spend some time with her family too.
She added: “Me personally I’m working Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year, but fortunately we do kind of work short shifts.
“A lot of people work 12-hour shifts, but over the main Christmas days we work shorter shifts, so everyone has at least half of one of the days.
“The staff that are in on those days try to make it special for each other.”