15/05/2026
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"As nurses, we can't change what's happening, but we can change how a patient feels and make them more comfortable."
Meet Sue Ryder nurse Vicki, who has taken her passion for community nursing to the next level by training as an Advanced Practitioner. She provides specialist palliative care to patients in their own homes as part of the Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice community team.
"Specialist palliative care is about quality of life, helping someone to live and die well. It's about identifying what's important to our patients and seeing how we can support them to achieve that. People's goals tend to become a lot smaller with advanced illness, so it might just be that someone wants to sit in their garden and spend some time in the sunshine, and something as simple as a wheelchair can enable that to happen. It might not seem big, but it's important to that person to fulfil that goal.
"People have a birthing plan and do everything to ensure a baby's arrival into the world goes well, but as a society, we don't think about the end of life in the same way. My role is about helping someone to die well and peacefully, and you only get one chance to get that right.
"I love community nursing. It's more about the whole person. You meet the family, you meet the pets, and you see what is important to people. People say it must be a really depressing job, but actually it's really fulfilling and rewarding, and there is so much laughter. You may be meeting people for sad reasons, but it's not all about sadness."
Thank you, Vicki, and all nurses, for all you do 💙
