As part of the Diamond Jubilee, the Queen Elizabeth scholarship programme was created with the aim of creating a dynamic community of young global leaders across the commonwealth. The university of Windsor (Ontario) and Keele University (Staffordshire) were granted funding in palliative care nursing. Their goal was to promote shared excellence and international leadership through research and knowledge exchange.
Following an interview process, as the first UK participant, I travelled to Canada for three months in 2016. In exchange the Douglas Macmillan Hospice (DMH) and the Donna Louise Children’s hospice have supported 3 Canadian students so far. I spent time in three different hospices, a palliative care unit in a hospital and a community placement.
Palliative care is relatively new in Canada so I found it interesting to see how they ran things and also to share how the DMH differs in practice. Whilst on placement, I identified there was a lack of advance care planning, so during my time in Canada I shared my knowledge of Advance care planning from the DMH to an audience of over 50 people.
I found end of life care in Canada was exceptional, and one of my goals is to implement some of the personal touches I witnessed, to improve end of life care services at the DMH. Each Canadian hospice has a reflection room; this area is used for patients and families, but also for the staff to use during and after a shift. This space may be one way to prevent compassion fatigue and nursing burnout, ever rising topics in palliative care research.
One of the key points I found throughout my time in Canada was to remember the little things which improve patient centred end of life care and how we as an organisation can integrate this into our hospice.
For more information visit Douglas Macmillan Hospice.
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