"Fantastic nursing care"

My wife was terminally ill in Oncology Ward 61at he BRI. She died there, peacefully and painlessly on St David’s Day

I wrote this to email Sarah Green (head honcho at UWE Bristol Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences) some of whose students were nursing her and others in the same ward.

Brilliant place, brilliant people, top to bottom.

Here is my message:

I wanted to write to you following my recent experiences of meeting UWE nursing students in the BRI Oncology over the past 10 weeks.

Especially so since I was a member of the course design team for the original CNAA submission under Christine Webb in 1989 and taught on some components the course until I left UWE in 1994.

My wife (also an ex-UWE employee and teacher on many nursing courses in the old NHASS department - Clinical Teachers, DN, Midwifery etc. ) was receiving treatment in Oncology Ward 61 during this time so I had an extended opportunity both behind and in front of the curtains, to see and hear your students working with many patients including, frequently, my own wife.

In general I found that the students' interest in the job, their interpersonal and practical skills and above all their compassionate ability to ‘meet’ the patients and their various needs (in what was, after all a very trying experience for both parties) to be exceptionally good. I got to know the names of these young women during these weeks, but it would be invidious single out anyone in particular and in any case you will be able to find out for yourself who they were from the placement records. (And, by the way, I think they should be formally recognised and the quality of their work acknowledged).

On particular example will suffice:

Ward 61 is a very busy short-stay ward for patients on various kinds of radio- and chemotherapy with (usually) short admission for nausea/anti-emetic stabilisation before returning home or another kind of care. Just after Christmas a very old, very frail and very confused lady was admitted to Ward 61 and disappeared being the curtains with three UWE students. Over the next 30 minutes or so I heard the whole story from behind the curtains in the adjacent cubicle. Without exception, their nursing including the washing, dressing, treating, calming, comforting and settling, was of a very high quality indeed. I realise that I had a privileged position, being out of sight and known not to be part of any formal assessment, but if I had been their practical work teacher I would have been very proud.

I do a fair bit of supervision these days so I would say that I’m a pretty good judge of many aspects of their performance, so I’m taking it upon my self to write and tell you about it.