Hospice’s urgent appeal
A BERKSHIRE hospice has launched an urgent appeal.
The Thames Hospice in Maidenhead is hoping to fund an additional five nursing assistants to support more patients on the Inpatient Unit.
The Inpatient Unit is a 29bed specialist end-of-life and palliative care centre.
Each month the nursing assistants will cost £10,365 and the hospice is hoping to raise enough money to fund six months of extra support, totalling £62,190.
The hospice is continuing to face unprecedented demand for its services with an occupancy rate of 92%, the highest level in the UK.
It regularly has more than 10 people who are in a great deal of pain and distress waiting for a bed on the unit.
Sister Anne Jones, head of the Inpatient Unit at Thames Hospice, said: “Our Nurses have a relentless workload and are always stretched; over the past month alone we have cared for more than 60 patients on our Inpatient Unit.
“The extra nursing support will relieve the extraordinary demands on nurses and enable us to help care for more local people who need and deserve the best hospice care.”
Thames Hospice created the nursing assistant role last year to support the development of existing senior health care assistants and to upskill them to help ease the pressure on nurses during busy shifts.
This is the first role of its kind to be introduced in the hospice sector
Additional nursing assistants will enable the hospice to help more people like Alix who received roundthe-clock care, counselling and complementary therapy.
Her husband Andy said: “When we called the hospice it was full, but the specialist nurse put Alix as high priority and to my relief she was admitted the next day.
“The nurses had such a kind way of speaking with Alix and we always felt Alix was a person to the nursing team, not another patient.”
“I know from Anne that they need to fund more nursing care as the team is stretched, tired and has no time to recover from the pandemic, but they are dedicated to their patients.
“Please donate so every patient can get the most loving personal care and kindness like Alix did.”
Thames Hospice costs £12 million a year to run and it relies on charitable donations for more than 50% of its funding.
Services are provided free of charge to anyone who needs them and the hospice is assisted by 700 volunteers who help support people on end of life care.