Background
In 2010, eight nurses received widening access through nurse leadership seedcorn grants of up to £7,500 to:
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investigate ways of making access to hospice and end of life care more equitable for anyone that needs it
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develop and enhance their own leadership abilities through undertaking the work.
Funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing, grant-holders had up to 15 months to complete their work and submitted a final report once the work was complete. Read more about:
Find out more about the successful grantees in this first round of grants and further information about the application criteria.
This information is available to download as a pdf.
For the individual
The majority of grant-holders felt that their leadership abilities had been enhanced more than they expected through undertaking this piece of work.
“The project has helped me to identify where the gaps in my knowledge lie and provided insight into how these may be addressed.”
Jane Biggs, Rowcroft Hospice
Many felt more confident in their own abilities, for example by learning how to:
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better manage expectations of people
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advocate for the group of patients they were focusing on
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identify and approach key people relevant to the work.
Other ways included:
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gaining insight and knowledge into how the hospice as an organisation works by working at a different level
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having the opportunity to present ideas and findings and being seen by others as an ‘expert’ in the field
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increased self awareness.
Through support from others
All grant-holders said that support of others was essential in helping them keep focussed, enabling them to achieve what they did. Support at a senior level within the hospice was crucial and several mentioned that regular one to one mentor meetings with a key person, for example the director of patient care, was useful in:
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exploring ways forward when things do not go quite as planned
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suggesting relevant reading and avenues of support
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learning from them about what makes a good leader.
In addition the encouragement of work colleagues was important to keep the momentum going and their support essential in allowing grantees protected time to undertake the work.
From outside the organisation, support in the form of a steering group or forum to guide the work was found to be useful in keeping focussed and making links with key external individuals such as community development workers, important for opening doors to the right key of people.
The seedcorn grants were to carry out scoping work and activities undertaken included:
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literature review
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data collection eg questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, mapping service provision
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contacting and meeting key people from other organisations as well as those close to the target group, such as carers of people with dementia.
In addition, Marion Hodgson from St Margaret’s Somerset Hospice, developed and evaluated an interactive programme to encourage teenagers to talk about death and dying. This will continue to be used by staff at the college as part of the Health and Social Care course.
Increased awareness
All were sure that they had raised awareness of the issue they were looking at, as well as the services the hospice could offer, to:
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hospice staff
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other healthcare professionals
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other relevant organisations.
Maaike Vandeweghe from Greenwich and Bexley Community Hospice received this feedback after a workshop organised for district nurses:
“We all look after patients with dementia without having appropriate training and support. After this session I feel I am going away being a lot better informed and more confident.”
She was also surprised at the extent of misconceptions among healthcare professionals, which only reinforced her belief that a trained and supported workforce is pivotal to making any sustainable changes to the care for people with dementia.
Identification of training needs
Other work also led to the identification of training needs to improve care. Anne Alsop at Dorothy House Hospice Care identified a need for dementia awareness training for the hospices’ own staff and volunteers and that they needed to consider how to become a more dementia friendly environment.
And at the Hospice of St Francis, Janet Willoughby recognised that training to improve communication skills and enhance understanding of different cultures and therefore peoples attitudes and behaviours, could make the experience of living well until death a more positive one.
The main lessons learned by grantees were to:
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keep objectives manageable
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not to be too ambitious.
For many of the grant-holders it was their first time managing a project so they were not aware of how much time would be needed to do the work.
Acknowledging that it is fine to make changes to the original plan, either to focus it to make it less overwhelming or during the work as it develops was also an important learning point. Connected to this the main challenge grant-holders faced was time management, their own as well as other peoples. Finding mutually convenient times to meet with key people was often difficult and so individuals had to learn to be patient, as well as persistent to make meetings happen.
Maintaining energy and enthusiasm for the work, particularly when feeling over-whelmed by it, was also challenging and many mentioned how useful the project lead day was, seven months after they started their project, for:
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recharging batteries
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making them realise the full potential and value of the work they were doing.
A variety of ways of sharing the findings of the funded work were identified. For example, individuals have:
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ran education sessions for colleagues, trustees and volunteers in the hospice
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had features in their hospice newsletter or the local newspaper
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either presented or had posters accepted for the Help the Hospices conference in September 2011.
In some cases, the project has contributed to ongoing work. At the Hospice of St Francis where Janet was looking at the end of life care education needs of nursing home staff, her work has been incorporated into a larger care home education programme that the hospice is contributing to across the East of England Strategic Health Authority.
Recommendations and a proposal for a dementia strategy written by Anne Alsop at Dorothy House was accepted and incorporated into the hospices’ five year plan by the senior management team, demonstrating ongoing commitment by the hospice to supporting people with dementia.
Future work
All state that the work will not end with the end of the grant funded project. Several mention that they are developing and running regular training courses for their own hospice staff and volunteers as well as others to:
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raise awareness
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better equip healthcare professionals to deal with the group of people they were looking at.
Two grant-holders successfully applied for a widening access through nurse leadership major grant, to build upon the findings of the seedcorn grant. One of which was Jane Biggs from Rowcroft Hospice who summed up:
"Although I found that my project did not progress as originally planned, it was still really useful in terms of scoping and learning more about the needs of people with dementia in South Devon.
This knowledge has been used to develop a more strategic approach to providing outreach services than envisaged initially”
Further information
Read more about the widening access through nurse leadership grant programme funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing.
Please contact the grants team at Help the Hospices if you have any questions.
