Professor Irene Higginson OBE, Director of The Cicely Saunders Institute at Kings College London, inspired all who attended the annual LOROS-DMU Centre for the Promotion of Excellence in Palliative Care (CPEP) lecture.
Saunders' vision for improving the care of patients with advanced illness and their families always focussed on research and education.
Professor Higginson gave detail to this vision discussing how the care of dying patients in intensive care had been developed by the joint endeavours of clinicians and researchers and hot of the press (Lancet Respiratory) findings that early, holistic management of breathlessness in advanced disease improves patients' lives and in doing so increases their survival too.
During the evening LOROS-CPEP awarded two prizes. The first of which recognised Postgraduate Student Excellence in Palliative Care and was awarded to Elaine Wright. Elaine had a consistently high standard of work on the Maters programme and showed how she was using this to transform the care of young people with cancer. The RCN-CPEP Pre-registration Nursing Award winner was Holly Smith who demonstrated how she made a difference to the care provided to a patient on an admissions ward through application of holistic palliative care.
The applications for the awards were of a very high standard and we congratulate the very worthy winners.
