On 1 October 2024, Angela Cooke, ellenor’s Practice Development Lead, and a mainstay of the hospice hospice charity for 18 years – will retire after a storied career in palliative care.
And, for almost two decades, Angela has been one of ellenor’s staunchest ambassadors.
Angela’s career in nursing began in 1982, as a nurse at Queen Mary’s hospital in Sidcup. As the century turned, Angela moved into a role as Deputy Manager of Operating Theatres, and why not? She loved it.
But according to Angela, there was a reason she preferred the operating theatre to working in the wider hospital: she hated being the bearer of bad news. “I just couldn’t bring myself to break bad news to the relatives of patients who had died,” says Angela. “It terrified me.”
By 2004, Angela was burnt out; exhausted. She needed a change – a fresh career twist.
“You hear tired or frustrated nurses saying ‘I might as well stack shelves’ – so, when I needed something new, that’s exactly what I did!” says Angela, chuckling.
She took a role in a local supermarket – but wasn’t fulfilled. Deep down, she knew she was meant for more – and that her expertise, empathy, and deep wells of compassion deserved a better canvas. So, when Angela became carer to a relative of her husband’s, it almost felt like the universe’s way of pulling her back into the right place.
In the course of this care, Angela found out about ellenor. She visited the inpatient ward, met the staff – and before long, ellenor’s nurses were Angela’s colleagues.
“I liked the ward, I liked ellenor’s Hospice at Home care team, and I knew it was a place I wanted to be part of. I picked up the phone, asked if there were any jobs. They hired me the next day.”
It was the start of a new lease of life for Angela - and eventually, ellenor became a family affair. Her daughter, Georgia, joined the team as a data analyst, giving Angela the unique joy of not only watching her daughter grow but also working alongside her in a place that meant so much to them both.
Not long later, she became a full-time Staff Nurse at ellenor, before going to university to delve deeper into palliative care’s most fundamental principles.
Returning to ellenor, she became a manager on the ward, before transferring to clinical governance and, later, accepting an exciting opportunity – to share her passion for palliation with others.
By now, the world was in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic. In care homes all over the country, people were dying, and their staff – having to deal with more death than they were ever prepared for – were breaking down and deserting their roles. Against this backdrop, a team from ellenor began to develop educational courses tailored to supporting these carers (who Angela calls the “quiet heroes”) not only with ‘hard’ palliative care skills, such as symptom control and verification of death, but with softer ones, too: including communication, wellbeing, and self-care.
“I like to think I humanised the training,” Angela says. “I didn’t want it to be task-oriented or tick-box-oriented, because then you lose the focus on that person in front of you.”
Creating a range of new courses, recruiting facilitators, and delivering the sessions through Zoom wasn’t easy – but Angela had spent a long career rolling with the punches, and she wasn’t about to stop now.