At the centre of our strategy is a firm commitment to ‘adapting to the changing world’, by reshaping our services in order to meet the needs of as many people in our community as possible.
When we wrote this strategy we could not have anticipated the huge global forces that would change our world in the form of COVID-19. This commitment, however, has helped underpin much of the thought and strategic direction our services have taken over the course of 2021-22, as we continued to live with, and adapt to, a world living with a pandemic.
While we have made good progress with the key objectives outlined in our strategy there are some areas we will continue to work on over the next 12 months. We look forward to opening our new family suites within the inpatient unit which will support families to be with their loved ones contributing to their care as they would wish. We will also be launching our innovative wellbeing service integrating rehabilitation and wellbeing approaches to care for both inpatients and outpatients.
We will be extending our Hospice at Home service out to East Lothian providing nursing care that is needed in peoples’ homes. In addition we will be launching our patient transport service which will facilitate ease of admission and discharge for people to our inpatient unit.
We will continue to work in partnership with our health and social care colleagues across Lothian and more nationally to share expertise and resources efficiently providing person centred support. In particular we will explore further research and educational opportunities with Queen Margaret University and University of Edinburgh. The opportunity to share learning and knowledge with the wider professional world will be embraced through our coordination and contributions at conferences and within publications.
Finally, we will be exploring how the Hospice can contribute in different ways to the climate change agenda, exploring practical ways we can make a difference from waste management to the use of electric vehicles to how we heat and run our buildings.
What is not in any doubt is that we will continue to adapt to an ever changing world. We have to in order to best support the families who use our services, our staff and volunteers and our wider community. Flexing and adapting our services to best support those who rely on us is as important now as it was when we first opened our services more than 40 years ago.
Thank you for taking the time to read this review of our impact over 2021-22 and for whatever part you play in our vital work.
Jackie Stone,
CEO
