Giles Peeters will be swapping runways for an ultra big challenge this weekend in aid of St Luke’s, having already raised a staggering £14,500 so far!
They came, they ran, they did us proud. A record number of runners gave it everything they’ve got for St Luke’s in the Run Plymouth Half marathon, 10k and 5k on Sunday morning, raising more than £40,000 for our specialist care.
A young family will be walking in the footsteps of their inspirational grandad to raise much-needed funds for St Luke’s.
Grace Morley’s grandad Owen Masters spent 24 hours at our specialist unit at Turnchapel last October, before he sadly died.
“His stay was only a short one,” she says, “but during those 24 hours our entire family were blown away by the quality of the care he received.”
“We are an ordinary family, and it’s not until you find yourselves in uncharted waters that you realise what local charitable organisations are available to provide the help and support when you need it the most.”
Lauren Prentice from Plympton will be running for St Luke’s at Plymouth Britain’s Ocean City Running Festival on Sunday 28 April in memory of her mum, Carol, who died in 2016 aged 65.
Bee and Vicky from St Luke’s urgent care service were thrilled to cut the ribbon to officially open Roger Young’s new Suzuki showroom in Saltash on Monday and thank the company for their generous support.
A stunning selection of gardens in West Devon, the South Hams and East Cornwall will be opening their gates once again in aid of local hospice care.
St Luke’s annual Open Gardens scheme is launching in March, providing avid horticulture fans the opportunity to explore amazing private plots, large and small, many not usually open to the public, while supporting our end of life care in your local community. All proceeds from the ticket sales will be playing a vital role in helping us to meet the rising costs of our dedicated care teams offering free specialist hospice care, when and where it is needed.
This year’s programme, running through to September and kindly sponsored by NFU Mutual Plymouth, promises plenty of inspiration for keen gardeners, as well as a proper treat for anyone who enjoys a fresh air outing in a beautiful environment.
Wayne Marshall, St Luke’s Open Gardens Co-ordinator, said: “We are really excited to kickstart the 2024 Open Gardens season. We have chosen a diverse selection of beautiful gardens to inspire and delight, many of which are not normally open to the public, so offer a unique insight into garden design.
“This year we are honoured and delighted that the highly successful local artist and St Luke’s patron, Brian Pollard has kindly created such an enchanting image for the cover of our Open Gardens brochure.
“Excitingly, Brian has generously donated to St Luke’s the framed original acrylic painting and we are including it as an amazing prize in our Open Gardens raffle, so be sure to buy your tickets when you visit one of the gardens.”
The artwork is currently on display at Kaya Gallery, Plymouth where you can also buy raffle tickets for either £1 or £5 for a book.
Stretching from the outskirts of Plymouth right across our catchment area in the South Hams, Dartmoor, West Devon and just over the border into Cornwall – from Kingsbridge to Lewdown, there will be a varied selection of popular gardens opening during the season alongside some exciting new additions, including the beautifully unique The Garden House in Yelverton on Thursday 18 April and Wednesday 14 August and Highwell in Churchstow, offering five acres of wonderful garden spaces on Sunday 12 May.
Highlights of the season include a special Easter Sunday opening of Gnaton Hall, near Yealmpton and a familiar favourite of the landscaped grounds of the Grade One listed Flete House, near Ermington, which will be opening on Sunday 28 July between 12pm and 5pm.
There’s no need to book in advance for any of the gardens – just turn up on the allotted date and time and follow the orange St Luke’s signs to car parking and the gardens themselves and pay on the gate with cash or contactless card; tickets cost £6 and under-16s have free entry.
Once again we will be working in partnership with the team at Drake’s Island to provide guided tours. Set in the beautiful surroundings of Plymouth Sound, Drake’s Island boasts unique views across Cornwall, the city and beyond. Funds from the ticket sales will go to St Luke’s, apart from a small booking fee. Tickets will be available exclusively here.
Wayne added: “As a charity, we couldn’t survive without the kindness of all our supporters. This includes everyone who attends our Open Gardens, the big-hearted garden owners who welcome them, and not forgetting our proud sponsors NFU Mutual Plymouth. Together over the last 14 years that the scheme has been running, more than £540,000 has been raised for our patient care, which is incredible, thank you.”
You can pick up a copy of our Open Gardens 2024 brochure and view the full list of gardens on offer at any of our charity shops, at local garden centres and supporting businesses, or you can download it online here.
Do you work in health and social care? If so, we need your views to help shape how our services will look over the next three years.
At St Luke’s, we design our specialist care and support around the ever-changing needs of our patients and their families, and the contribution we can make as a partner in the wider health and social care system. Our community is so important to us, we trust and value your views and want to provide a service that suits you.
We’re putting together our three-year strategy. Would you help us get this right by taking part in our survey, answering key questions about what we do now and how we could best develop in the future? We will listen to all your feedback, together with that of patients and their families as well as our staff and volunteers.
Thank you so much – we really appreciate your insight and time.
Complete the survey here: https://forms.office.com/e/VYi687EHSA
St Luke’s Hospice Plymouth’s end of life Urgent Care Team ventured across the Tamar last week to visit their first patient at home in East Cornwall as part of a pilot service running until the end of March 2024.
We followed senior health care assistant Bee Daniels and nurse Jo Davis as they went to meet a very grateful Paul Treeby and his daughter, Jude Kitt.
It’s less than half a kilometre from one side to the other but crossing the Tamar Bridge represented a significant milestone for St Luke’s pilot East Cornwall Urgent Care Service.
Until last week it had been a bridge too far for the hospice’s “at home” teams who already clock up more than 80,000 miles a year taking our specialist care to the doorsteps of patients in Plymouth and surrounding areas of West and South Devon.
In a ground-breaking move, a four-month trial service has been launched to visit end of life patients and their families at home in a largely rural stretch from Saltash to Torpoint and the Rame Peninsula, up the Tamar Valley towards Callington and Launceston and across to Liskeard.
Patients in this area have benefited from St Luke’s care at Derriford Hospital and in the charity’s specialist unit at Turnchapel, but there has previously been no service available to support them either to remain at home or to care for them on discharge from hospital.
Senior healthcare assistant Bee and nurse Jo were thrilled and proud to be pioneers on a mission to make a positive difference to people’s lives, working closely with NHS healthcare colleagues across the water.
“The whole team are really excited to go there,” said Bee, in the driving seat as they passed the Welcome to Cornwall sign in the centre of the bridge. “It’s another big area for us to cover and it’s going to be a lot more rural nursing, but we’re all up for the challenge.”
That stalwart can-do attitude certainly came in handy as they turned off the A38 to snake through the Cornish countryside to meet Paul Treeby, the team’s first patient on the service’s first day.
Beneath bleak black clouds and intermittent heavy downpours, Bee drove carefully, bumping along increasingly muddy lanes until she hit Tarmac with grass growing down the middle, her view hemmed in by high hedges on either side.
Suddenly a beautiful rainbow and a glimmer of blue sky appeared in the distance beckoning Bee and Jo to one of the small farming communities that pepper the hinterlands between Liskeard and Callington.
“It’s a typical journey, really,” said Jo. “We’re based in the city, but we have a lot of isolated people to visit out in the countryside. We keep going come rain or shine, grass or gravel!”
St Luke’s Urgent Care is a healthcare assistant led service, so Jo wouldn’t normally be out visiting patients herself, except when there’s an urgent need for her nursing expertise.
“I put myself down for the first shift so that I can see what the challenges are and support the team while they are getting used to the area,” she explained.
With the satnav out of range, they managed to arrive in roughly the right place, but Paul’s tucked-away home wasn’t easy to find in the pouring rain, despite his instructions. Luckily, he lives in a friendly hamlet where everyone knows everyone, and hardy folk who walk their dogs in all weathers were eager to point Bee in the right direction.
There was an almost palpable sense of relief as Paul’s daughter, Jude Kitt, opened the door of her father’s bungalow and, along with black Labrador Harvey, welcomed Bee and Jo inside.
Any apprehension Paul had felt before their arrival vanished immediately as they asked him gently about himself, how he was feeling and what they could do to help.
“We build a rapport with patients very, very quickly,” explained Jo. “Going in on a daily basis you can quickly see how someone is and if there is escalation of symptoms you can deal with that. The patient can get what they need from us in a timely manner. We make sure everything is as easy as possible.”
Their role is also to liaise with the other health professionals involved in his care, including his GP and the NHS Cornwall palliative care nurse who gives Paul and Jude advice over the phone.
Paul, 75, has been living with prostate cancer for 10 years. After an operation, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, he was put on long-term chemotherapy to control the disease. But, in July this year – just a month after his dear wife Elizabeth’s death from leukaemia – Paul’s oncology team told him that the treatment had run its course and there was nothing more they could do.
It means the world to him to now be able to spend his remaining time at home in the community he knows and loves, with reassuring support from St Luke’s.
“I’ve been a country lad all my life. I was brought up on the farm. I was born at Blunts, down the road. Dad was killed in a tractor accident and Mother had three of us to look after so she took a job as a housekeeper for another farm at Menheniot. That was tough, but you just got on with it. When I was old enough, I went out to work and started digger driving, which I loved,” he said.
Paul and Elizabeth brought up their family on a smallholding near Trewidland – a tiny hamlet between Liskeard and Looe – and he made a living operating diggers for several local companies.
“We had around 40 acres and kept sheep through the winter and cut hay in summer. When we couldn’t cope with that any more, my son Tim took it on and bought us this bungalow to retire to.”
Paul was quick to praise Bee and Jo at the end of their visit.
“I was very impressed with St Luke’s team. It’s good to have them coming in to help me with any problems I’ve got. I think it will be a big benefit having them down here in Cornwall,” he said. “I think it’s something that’s got to be done. There’s a massive demand.
“They came in and made me feel at home. They talked about my tablets, and they took me in to have a wash. It was all very relaxed and no stress. That suits me down to the ground because I don’t do well with stress. That’s why I wouldn’t want to go back to hospital again.”
Jude, who lives four miles away at Pensilva, has been juggling her own family life with caring for her dad, with no real chance to grieve for her mother, who was the first person she would usually have talked things through with.
“It feels like a huge relief already. Dad deserves the best care and now we have got somebody coming every day who can help us. I feel like I have a team behind me now,” she said.
“The main thing is the continuation of people coming in so they will get to know Dad and recognise any day to day deterioration. I feel like it’s all been on me, and it’s been a bit overwhelming at times.”
Jo added: “There must be a lot of families who have been struggling up until now and it’s good to be able to tell them there is help on the way.”
The final word goes to Bee, who said: “Dying is a massive part of life. Everyone deserves to have the best death they can have, and we can help with that journey.”
Most of us, when we look back on our career, want to feel we’ve made a difference – that the weeks, months and years have really counted and we’ve left the world better than we found it. This is a big part of what makes our lives meaningful, and it’s a great motivator to keep doing the work we do or, perhaps, change direction completely.
If you’ve never considered working as part of our hospice team – or thought about it but not yet gone ahead – it’s worth knowing our staff often tell us it’s been the most fulfilling part of their career – by far! And we’re not just talking about St Luke’s doctors and nurses here – it’s our equally dedicated people working more behind the scenes, too, from kitchen and maintenance staff to administrators, fundraisers, and finance, marketing and IT buffs. All play a vital role in the trusted service our charity provides – free of charge – so that no-one in our community needs to miss out on gold-standard care at the end of their life.
Hospice Care Week (9 – 15 October) is an opportunity for us to say an extra-big thank-you to each and every one our dedicated, hardworking crew. We see you, we value you, we celebrate you!
With demand on our services growing, it’s more important than ever that we continue to attract talent across our services, from hands-on care and bereavement support to our charity shops and fundraising events. As an employer of choice, we want our staff to enjoy coming to work. We offer a positive, supportive and inclusive environment that encourages them to thrive, and attractive benefits and rewards, including generous annual leave and a cash-back scheme to help with everyday health costs, such as dental and eye care.
So, if you’ve been on the fence about working for our hospice, the time to apply is now. It could just be the most life-enhancing move of your career.
We look forward to hearing from you! Visit our job vacancy page and set up a job alert.
St Luke’s patient Michael Scott thought his eyes were playing tricks on him when he spotted top Plymouth Argyle player Finn Azaz walking onto the ward in our specialist unit at Turnchapel.
“Never in a million years did I think that would happen. I recognised him straight away because he has come back to Argyle again this season and he’s scored some goals in recent games. Last year I saw him play a couple of times and, of course, I’ve seen him in the media,” said an astonished and delighted Michael, who has taken his son and daughter to matches at Home Park in the past. “It was a complete surprise!”
Modest midfielder Finn has recently started volunteering for St Luke’s in his spare time. The 23-year-old stopped to chat with Michael and another patient on the ward during his recent visit to our HQ to help the fundraising team.
“Finn came over to talk to me and I told him my life story,” added Michael, 61, who was thrilled that he was able to meet the rising football star before being discharged home a couple of days later. “He came across as a very genuine and nice bloke and he asked me some very good questions. I wish him well for the rest of the season and hope Argyle do as well as they did last year when they went into the Championship.”
Liverpool-born Michael, who lives at Keyham, was in the Royal Navy for 34 years, retiring in 2012. He was working as a safety officer for cruise ships before his diagnosis with Stage 4 bowel cancer. He was seen and supported by St Luke’s hospital team at Derriford before being transferred to our inpatient unit for specialist symptom management. He and his family – wife, Angela, daughter Bethany and son Matthew, who has followed his dad into the Navy – will now have the support of our at home team.
“I’m looking forward to going home but I have thoroughly enjoyed the two weeks I’ve spent in St Luke’s as an inpatient. The people are fantastic, and I feel honoured to have been asked to come here,” said Michael, who was also thrilled to be allowed a couple of hospice visits from his chocolate Labrador Milo. “It’s an amazing place, and you never know who you’re going to meet!”
