“Baby Steps”: How Working On ellenor’s Inpatient Ward Has Given Nurse Taylor a New Lease of Life

First introduced to palliative care when she qualified as a nurse 10 years ago, Taylor knew – even then – that it was always something she’d like to end up doing. However, she didn’t follow that career thread right away – choosing instead to train as a mental health nurse, before working in an array of hospital settings: including acute admissions and perinatal.

And it wasn’t until 2021 – after Taylor moved to Kent from her native Cumbernauld (a town just outside of Glasgow) to live with her now-husband – that she decided to pursue her passion for palliative care full-time. In fact, the catalysing event for her career in hospice care actually came from an unlikely source – the television.

Taylor saw an episode of The Hospice – a documentary series focusing on the lives of patients under ellenor’s care – and it sparked a flame that had been slowly burning for a decade. Taylor saw a role on ellenor’s inpatient ward was available, applied – and the rest is history.

That was in February 2023. So, more than half a year on, how is Taylor finding her position?

“I love it – I really, really love it. It’s different from what I’m used to doing, and I feel like I’ve learned a whole new field of nursing as I’ve been practising, so it’s really interesting. There’s so much to learn. Palliative care has changed a lot since I first practised it. It’s progressed; the medications have changed, and the way things are done is being constantly refreshed – for the better, obviously! It’s learning all of that again, which I’ve loved.

“I feel like it’s given me a new lease of life in the wonderful world of nursing.”

To successfully navigate that world, nurses need a wide variety of skills. Chief among them, though? The ability to put yourself in the shoes of the patients and families you support.

“You need a lot of empathy,” Nurse Taylor explains. “You’re dealing with people who are, themselves, dealing with a whole host of different emotions. The families might be angry at the world – and that’s completely understandable. It’s vital that we have that empathy to be there for patients and their families; to have that thick skin and resilience.”

Another vital requirement – and one Nurse Taylor, having worked in both hospital and hospice settings, is qualified to speak about – is more of a mindset.

It’s a mentality of acceptance and understanding: realising that, in a hospice setting, it’s less about prolonging life or curing the patient, but instead helping them live as well as possible; and enjoy their remaining time to the fullest.

“As nurses, we’re trained to be fixers,” Taylor explains. “But here, you can’t always fix it. What you can do, though, is make your patient feel comfortable, and as relaxed and pain-free as possible; to enhance that person’s quality of life. So, while you’re not able to change the prognosis, or dictate what’s going to happen – to change the grief and the difficult feelings that come along with that for the families – you are able to work with the person to make the time they have with us as positive as possible.”

It’s something the smaller caseload of a hospice environment (the IPW, for example, has 8 beds) allows time for – and a role Taylor’s naturally nurturing nature is well suited to.

“At a hospital, it can be quite busy,” she explains. “Nurses may not have time to give the family loads of space to talk. Here at ellenor, we’re able to do that – to give patients or families that platform. We can spend so much more time with them. We get to know them a lot better; and build these more personal relationships with families.

Those relationships aren’t just between ellenor’s nurses and the people they support on the ward, though – but are fundamental to what it means to be part of ellenor’s team. Celebrating the wins, supporting one another through the losses, and providing a vital sounding board – and pressure valve – for the role’s daily demands.

“We’re a close-knit group here on the IPW, and – in a place with these kinds of pressures – you need to be. We find jokes in the littlest things; there’s always treats on the table; everybody gets along well. And when there are situations that make us sad, or patients who cause us to reflect, we can talk about it with each other.”

Taylor’s journey as a person and a professional is written not only in the warmth and wisdom of the individual and nurse she is, but in ink – her narrative encoded within the tattoos that pepper her skin. One design depicts just two words – ’baby steps’.

“The words remind me to take it one step at a time,” Taylor says, smiling. “To approach each day as it comes. You don’t have to excel at everything, all the time. But as long as you keep moving forward, it’s alright.”

Considering the difference Nurse Taylor makes on ellenor’s inpatient ward every day, though – caring for people with life-limiting illnesses, while supporting their loved ones through one of the most challenging periods they’ll ever encounter – it’s clear Taylor’s strides aren’t baby steps at all.

But ones fit for giants.