Q: How do you manage people coming to Douglas House with such varied needs, requiring special equipment and special medication?


LC: Right from the word go we looked at recruiting nurses and carers with a really wide skill set and we have very much carried that on within our nursing team.


One-third of our nursing team have an acute care background. That’s essential when you get people coming in who might be quite acutely unwell. We also want nurses with palliative care skills. In the early days that was quite a challenge. At the very beginning we were delivering little end-of-life care... but really over the last year that has changed and although the majority of our work is still respite we have had an increasing number of emergency admissions and the skill of the whole team in managing end-of-life care has increased phenomenally. And then one-third of our nurses are learning disability trained nurses. They have specialist communication skills and are able to cope with challenging behaviour; skills which can be shared with the rest of the team.


Q: Because of looking after more acutely unwell people, do you see a change in the atmosphere or the balance within the house itself?


LC: I suppose there is a potential that at times it might feel a bit different, but again it is one of the skills that the team have here; managing the needs of somebody who is acutely unwell and possibly dying. At the same time there could be for example a karaoke session going on in the bar, or a quiz evening.


The team are superb at having both things happening at the same time and juggling those needs.


Yes, the young people in-house would probably have an awareness that someone was staying who was very unwell, but the atmosphere is not subdued and quiet; that’s not what it is like. The rooms are quite well insulated so if somebody is very poorly and doesn’t want to be disturbed and has the door shut they aren’t really disturbed. The activity rooms are down the other end of the corridor, so you can give that appropriate quietness where it is need.


Q: What’s different for the young person here, as opposed to being at home, in hospital or in another hospice setting?


LC: I suppose it’s about allowing them to have a bit of normality. For a lot of the young people if they rely on carers at home, the carers will come in at a set time, so it’s not unusual, for example, for young adult men with muscular dystrophy to be put into bed at 8.30/9.00 pm at night. That’s when the carers come and that’s when they have to go to bed.


Well that’s not what they want to do! So to be able to come here and have the freedom to stay up and watch the wrestling, or watch a film until 3 in the morning and eat a pizza before going to bed, it’s probably the only place they are going to be able to make those choices. So it is about them, it’s a dignity issue really; them being able to make the choices they want to make and having the ability within reason to support those choices.


‘We talk about people wanting to get the very most out of life and that is something the Douglas House


team is very skilled at.’ Liz Cornish


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