'Thinking Differently'
by Siddiqa Reininghaus
I was honoured to attend the Hospice UK Conference 2023 on Monday 6th November. This year’s conference took place at the Arena Convention Centre in Liverpool. As a developing Research Assistant, I represented Dr Lucy Bleazard’s abstract poster on the Withdrawal of Mechanical Ventilation in Motor Neurone Disease (MND). There was a prominent LOROS presence across the 3-day conference. LOROS’s medical director, Dr Luke Feathers, presented a talk about the transfer and development of the MND service from the acute hospital to the hospice. MND Nurse, Omina Yasmin, discussed the LOROS and MNDA succession planning project which facilitated Omina’s development into an MND specialist nurse.
Community engagement lead, Jacky McBlain, also presented LOROS’s Piecing it Together project which is about having conversations on death and dying with young people. These conversations led the young people to engage with a visual artist to assemble jigsaw pieces into a large art sculpture.
LOROS colleagues also represented posters on developing skills in working with interpreters about end of life care, and providing occupational therapy support for symptom management of breathlessness at home.
As a conference attendee, I also had the exciting opportunity to partake in powerful and engaging presentation talks. Diverse topics were explored by insightful keynote speakers, with one standout being Dr. Natalie Richardson's extended presentation on uncovering the everyday experiences and emotional engagements of clinical and non-clinical hospice staff. Her research revealed a shared perspective among staff that comprehensive training is essential for navigating challenging conversations with patients and their families. Additionally, the study produced poignant animated videos, underscoring the emotional nature of end-of-life care for all staff, both clinical and non-clinical.
The conference proved to be both enlightening and an excellent networking opportunity, allowing me to finally match faces with names I had previously only interacted with through email. It was heartening to observe research efforts that were not only directed towards patients but also tailored to benefit the staff. This conveyed the message that palliative care support services should be made universally accessible and customised, reinforcing the conference's core theme of "thinking differently."
