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Hospice community nurses are in short supply and this Hospice Awareness Week, May 16-22, Harbour Hospice is asking the community to donate to help meet the growing demand for specialist palliative care.
Thanks to the generosity of donors, most Harbour Hospice patients are cared for at home during their final weeks and months of life, and it’s the community nurses, among many others, who play a huge part in making this happen.
Hibiscus Coast resident Debra Jean, along with her sister, cared for their mother in her Arkles Bay home earlier this year and says the nurses were “just amazing”.
“Mum died only three and a half months after she was diagnosed at 71 with cancer, so it was all very quick and such a shock for the family,” Debra says. “The hospice nurses started coming just a few weeks after her diagnosis and they were so compassionate. They explained everything and showed us how to look after mum. They taught us how to put her line in and they’d watch us do it, and check to make sure we were doing it right.”
Debra says it was a real privilege to be able to care for her mother.
“For me, it was showing her my love. But it was only because of the nurses that we had the confidence to do that. They talked to mum in a way that reassured her. Even when she couldn’t talk very much anymore they still explained every single thing they were doing and treated her with such respect.”
Harbour Hospice Chief Executive Jan Nichols says there are not enough specialist hospice nurses and that a growing number of people need their support.
“Given the limited pool of specialist community nurses in NZ and the high demand for them, Harbour Hospice is training skilled nurses from other parts of the healthcare system to become hospice nurses, taking them through an intense development programme,” she says. “I am proud of this novel approach, but aware that it comes at a cost which is over and avove our usual training budgets and comes in a year when Covid-19 has again depleted our charitable income.
Last year it cost around $14 million to run the service, and 51.5 percent of operational funding comes from the Waitematā District Health Board. The rest comes in from fundraising, income generated from hospice shops and community donations.
Hospice Awareness Week is an opportunity to share how hospice makes a difference. The charity is asking for people to donate to its appeal online and visit its Facebook page to share how hospice has made a difference to you and your family/whānau.
Info and donations: harbourhospice.org.nz/donate/appeal
