Care & Compassion

At St Columba’s Hospice Care, we pride ourselves on delivering care that’s personal. That means we’re passionate about ensuring that the care and support we provide is tailored to an individual’s specific needs. A key component to achieving this is our multidisciplinary approach to patient care. Our team is dedicated to working together towards the common goal of enhancing each patient’s health and wellbeing through the highest possible level of care. That commitment to our patients and families and to each other, is what makes the Hospice a truly special place to work.

We continue to place great emphasis on the importance of staff and volunteer engagement, and this has been central to overcoming the challenges we’ve faced throughout the year.

In 2020/21 we:

• Established a Staff Voices group, led by staff, to enhance communication and engagement across the staff workforce.
• Introduced a newly structured and streamlined induction programme which encourages staff to engage with their learning and development, ensuring they feel both supported and informed throughout the initial weeks of starting a new role.
• Embedded the Hospice values into people initiatives bringing our values to life e.g. within our recruitment strategy and the introduction of new staff appraisal processes. 
• Developed a culture of reflective practice, providing opportunities for learning from and within practice, supporting emotional health and wellbeing. This includes a new arts focussed group open to all staff and a new group for community staff nurses and support workers.
• Developed a senior clinical on call system to facilitate workplace leadership out of normal working hours.
• Developed an online learning hub utilising different online platforms for learning and development. This has increased uptake of learning through flexibility of access to the materials.
• Launched a monthly session called ‘Hospice Connections’ giving staff and volunteers a platform to speak about their roles, current projects and topics of interest.
• Created a dedicated section on our website for staff and volunteers which allows quick and easy access to the latest information and training available.
• Embraced online meeting platforms such as Teams to maintain communication.

Our inpatient unit adapted rapidly to ensure services remained firmly in place, visiting restrictions were introduced, PPE became essential for all staff working in clinical areas and necessary changes were implemented to create a safe environment for patients, families and staff. To meet the demand for hospice care, we worked hard to deliver more services virtually than ever before. We suspended face-to-face outpatient services, instead offering support remotely for patients living in the community, but continued making essential home visits.

In 2020/21 we:

• Introduced the electronic patient record system TRAK which ensures real time shared records across Lothian, improving communication across patient services.
• Supported patients and families over the phone and with virtual consultations via a secure video call using the NHS system ‘Attend Anywhere/Near Me’.
• Implemented a single point of access to hospice care for patients and families. All referrals now come to a central access team of senior clinicians who triage the referral and signpost the patients to the most relevant service.
• Created a multi-professional community hospice team comprising of nurse specialists, staff nurses, doctors, clinical assistants, a physio and an occupational therapist. This team now provides a variety of skills to support the diverse needs of patients and families.
• Launched a dedicated family support section on the website providing useful information, advice and resources for family members, friends and carers.

In 2020/21 we:

• Established a hospitality team to provide a more person centred approach to inpatient catering. 
• Built children’s play parks within the Hospice grounds to support family play.
• Extended the Hospice cycle and tool shed to accommodate an increase in the number of cyclists visiting the Hospice buildings.
• Further developed our domestic services to guarantee adherence to National Patient Safety systems ensuring high level infection control standards across the organisation.

When developing our ‘Adapting to a Changing World’ strategy, we recognised an unmet need for a more community-based end of life care model. In response, we set about developing and shaping our service to meet the needs of our community. Our reconfigured ‘Community Hospice’ consists of two multi professional teams and a new Hospice at Home service providing hands on care for people in their own homes.

In 2020/21 we:

• Admitted 772 new patients to our community hospice service, a 25% increase compared to the previous four year average.
• Provided 12,450 interactions with our patients. This is higher than previous years as a result of the Hospice adapting services to meet Covid-19 safety restrictions.
• Supported 181 people to die in their own home, a 43% increase on the previous four year average.
• Secured premises in Haddington House to deliver outpatient and bereavement support closer to home in East Lothian. Due to Covid restrictions no service delivery has taken place as yet but the space supported staff as office space minimising non-essential travel.
• Secured additional funds to purchase two electric bikes to support the Community Hospice team on visits to patients and families.

The need for our counselling and family support services has never been greater. The impact of the pandemic is anticipated to lead to a significant increase in the need for bereavement support due to restrictions on visiting, funeral attendance and general access to healthcare and supportive care services.

The number of sessions provided by our team continues to increase year on year with a 66% increase in counselling services activity reported in 2020/21 when compared to the previous four year average. We adopted a blended model of virtual and face to face sessions to maximise efficiency of delivery service and continue to develop services to provide choices for those who access them. 

In 2020/21 we:

• Hosted a free online Arts Symposium, the first of its kind in Scotland, bringing together arts therapists, community, performing artists and professionals from different disciplinary spaces to re-consider what the arts can offer to people and communities when facing death, dying and loss. The event attracted 100 delegates and was supported by Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care, QMU and Scottish Music Therapy Trust.
• Developed a new collaboration with Royal Scottish National Orchestra offering free online concerts to Hospice patients, families, carers, staff and volunteers.
• Had 533 attendances for art sessions, concerts and events.