Marie Curie is a charity providing end of life and palliative care to 50,000 people each year across the nations of the UK. We employ 1,000 Registered Nurses who provide care in Hospices and Community Nursing Services. We are committed to supporting RNs who are aspiring leaders to undertake a personal leadership programme. We will provide facilitation, mentoring and shadowing; plus a series of workshops with interactive topics and active learning activities as part of the programme design. We will encourage leaders to share their learning and demonstrate impact on practice. The programme will be based on person-centred and compassionate leadership principles creating environments where individuals can flourish.
On adapting to the COVID-19 crisis:
- What are the main challenges your nurses are facing right now?
Our nurses are facing new challenges every day including the sourcing and wearing of PPE, dealing with the uncertainty of the current health economy and of course the anxiety of providing frontline care to patients and families directly affected by COVID-19. Palliative care is undergoing huge changes at this time and our nurses are having to adapt quickly to new guidance and processes sometimes on a daily basis. Palliative care is a key discipline for end of life care in COVID-19 and we are rapidly learning how best to support patients and their families who have very quickly gone from normality to life changing and life ending situations. Delivering palliative care whilst wearing PPE affects some of the key non-verbal communication skills – a smile goes a long way but when wearing a mask we are having to ensure our verbal communication is key.
- How are you overcoming these challenges?
As a charity we are working hard to ensure our communication with staff is timely, consistent and accurate. A group of director level clinicians and senior members of the operational teams review all guidance, assess the current position and respond to staff queries on a daily basis. Regular staff communication is being produced along with policy, flowcharts and other guidance. PPE is being sourced and distributed as effectively as possible. We are seeing that service innovations are happening more quickly as services and staff need to adapt. We are seeing more opportunities for collaboration and partnerships with other independent organisations and the NHS. Examples of this include the switching of service models from planned services to more rapid response and multi-visit services into people’s homes to support people outside of hospital; and virtual outpatient appointments for patients and virtual visiting for friends and family members for patients in our hospices. We have worked in partnership with the evolution of the Nightingale field hospitals associated with large cities where prevalence has been much higher. We have also developed our virtual learning and support offer this is for our staff and also we are starting to offer our expertise externally to others within health and social care through webinars and our on line learning and development platform. Teams are working hard to support mental health & wellbeing through regular contact, virtual wellbeing sessions and team approaches to problem solving. We have also been sharing extensive leadership support through various methods including email, yammer and Microsoft Teams. All of the Nightingale challenge participants are receiving virtual coaching from their identified mentor.
- How are your nurses adapting?
Our nurses work across community and hospice settings as well as providing support remotely through our information and support line. This has been particularly helpful for staff who are in the shielding categories and so are socially distancing at home and can still use their knowledge and experience to support people virtually. The multiple changes in process have caused some concern but line managers are working hard to support their teams and ensure they receive the correct information and PPE. The Nightingale Challenge plans have been delayed but we now have our first session planned for mid May as a virtual leadership event. The nurses involved have been allocated mentors and are starting to work on their individual projects. We have also offered our nightingale challenge nurses the opportunity to shadow our pandemic meetings so they experience how we oversee the challenges across the charity and how the whole charity is focused on addressing the challenges to support them in their daily work. This will also enable them to observe strategic decision making and have the opportunity to influence some of these decisions.
