Rowcroft Hospice held a celebration recently to recognise their end-of-life care ambassador graduates and showcase their inspiring community projects, which have been designed to improve and influence end-of-life care.

A spokersperson for the hospice said of the programme: “Launched in 2018, the end-of-life care programme is led by Rowcroft’s Education Team, in collaboration with the Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trusts End-of-Life Care Team.  

“Ambassadors enter the programme with a desire to improve and influence end-of-life care in their work setting with the full support of their manager and organisation. Our ambassadors work across all local settings and organisations including the NHS, care homes, community and in hospice care, in a variety of health and social care roles. “

Rowcroft’s Head of Education, Kerry Macnish, applauded the graduates:  “These ambassadors inspire others to improve, achieve, to be active change agents and to champion great end-of-life care in our locality, and we are proud to lead it.”

End-of-life care ambassador and Torbay Hospital Healthcare Assistant Ryan Parker created a comfort room as part of his work-based project, with the aim to build a calming and comforting space for patients and their loved ones to relax in when needed. 

He said: “We’ve had so much amazing feedback about the comfort room so far. I think that every ward needs one!” 

Kieron George, Healthcare Assistant at Rowcroft Hospice and End of Life Care Ambassador Graduate said: “The programme has been amazing – the networking has been really good and it’s helped my confidence a lot. When I first started it, I was anxious about talking to people and putting myself out there, but to have a safe environment where you can talk amongst people that you’ve got to know over a course of time has been really good” 

Kieron’s project involved improving end of life care for LGBTQ+ patients which included creating a resource folder for the inpatient unit, hospice at home and the community. He said: “The Education team at Rowcroft are amazing – they do everything in a fun, easy and understandable way, nothing feels like a task. It doesn’t feel like you’re here on a long day of learning, it just feels like you’re here with friends and you pick stuff up along the way, I think it’s really good. It’s a great platform and an amazing environment to teach people in as well.” 

Community Occupational Therapist and End of Life Care Ambassador Graduate Maria Palfrey said: “I think the programme is amazing and invaluable, just to be able to come here in this environment and network with people is just brilliant and the knowledge that they have on the end of life is just amazing. It was a really nice experience.”