The aim of the visit to HAU was to benchmark clinical and management techniques used by HAU in order to help support Hospice Ethiopia who are currently undergoing a difficult time due to a major donor ceasing their support.
Dr James Mumford writes for ehospice about the visit.
The week’s activities
The week began with attending prayers prior to the quarterly meeting of staff at HAU. After planning our week’s visit, we attended a home visit assessment of patients with nursing staff from HAU.
The next day, following prayers, we visited the day care facility and later were taken on a comprehensive tour of HAU, visiting all the departments: administrative, educational and clinical with the opportunity to speak to the staff in each department. This allowed an excellent overview of how the unit functions.
On the third day we had a detailed and very helpful meeting with the chief executive team, particularly focusing on the financial planning of Hospice Ethiopia, and had the opportunity to share the experience of the Chief Executive Team, using their advice and experience on how the management and financial problems of Hospice Ethiopia might be helped and supported. This meeting was followed by attending an outreach clinic to the north of Kampala.
On the fourth day we attended a case discussion meeting attended by both clinical and non-clinical staff, which impressed us in that this approach helped encourage the team ethos of the organisation. Later that day we went with staff on further home visits.
The final day we attended the team Journal Club where a social worker presented a study on social problems in palliative care and we had an informative discussion on how this study (from Europe) compared with the situation in Uganda.
After this meeting we had a planning meeting with Prof Merriman, Nurse Rachel (who had previously visited Hospice Ethiopia) and Nurse Bernadette Basemera who was accompanying us on our visit to the country.
This allowed us to share our knowledge of the situation in Ethiopia and allowed us to focus our objectives for the following week.
We felt highly privileged to see what can be achieved by a well-run organisation and to be allowed to see in detail just how this is done.
Team working and commitment to patient care
The overriding impressions of our visit to Hospice Africa Uganda were of a powerful sense of team working and commitment to patient care by all departments.
We were impressed by the involvement of all members of staff demonstrated by the daily prayer meeting for all team members followed by a summary from the management teams as to what was going on that day.
The courtesy shown to colleagues was very evident and demonstrated how this daily team meeting can reinforce team cohesion as well as informing staff of the organisation’s functions that day.
The use of the quarterly meeting to allow different departments to make presentations to the whole team further reinforced the team ethos in allowing all staff to have insights into other departments’ functions.
The talk from the founder on the importance of the whole team taking ownership of a problem allowed the entire team to be informed and involved.
We find it very hard to comment on any suggestion for improvement! We will use ideas from this visit back at home in the UK in our own organisations.
So many thanks to everyone at HAU for their generous donation of time and warm hospitality and in making our visit such a constructive & happy one.
Read more about the work of Hospice Africa Uganda on their website.
Leave a Reply