How you can help us

Help shape our services

If you have experienced our services, hearing your views is really important to us. We have a number of groups you can join, which meet at the Hospice and include patients, family members, carers and LOROS staff.

Patient and Carer Participation Group

This group has patients and carers as members. Your valuable feedback will help us to shape our current and future services to meet the needs of the patients and carers we look after.

This gives you the opportunity to positively influence the service develop. It gives you a voice and the opportunity to tell us about your experience of LOROS services and to tell us what has worked well and not so well.

Lynda Harding, a current member of the group, reflects:

“When my husband was transferred to LOROS for pain management it was a very frightening prospect in addition to the emotional stress caused by his illness. However, the reality was completely different and the experience of being in LOROS was so comforting for my husband and our family, and therefore for this reason I joined the Patient and Carer Participation Group, to draw on our experiences and hopefully ease people’s fears and perceptions.”

Patient Information Group/Readers’ Panel

The Readers’ Panel reviews new and revised LOROS information leaflets. The panel reviews the language used, the layout and presentation and assesses it’s appropriateness for the targeted audience. The Readers’ Panel works alongside the Patient Information Group, which meets bi-monthly at the Hospice to review patient literature, ensuring it is available to, and meets the needs, of all groups, including those hard to reach. The group also works to ensure appropriate literature is distributed externally.

Beverley Lott, a current member of the group, shares her thoughts:

“Being a member has enabled me to continue a personal link with LOROS. At our meetings the views and experience of all are welcomed and discussed in order to continue to provide the standard and quality of care to patients and families to which the Hospice is committed. Staff and volunteers work together in a spirit of mutual respect. It really is most impressive and rewarding.”

Help shape our training

Every year our Education department helps to train student doctors and nurses, teaching them about end of life care. It is very important that the trainees have an understanding of what it’s like to live with a terminal illness and the impact that this has on the lives of patients, their families and carers.

If you have been a carer for someone and feel you could talk about your experience in education sessions with trainee doctors and nurses, then our Education department would welcome your input.

Veronica talks about her experiences:

“When I heard that the LOROS education department was looking for bereaved carers to talk about their experience of end of life care to fifth year medical students, I knew instinctively that this was something I was prepared to do. It was my way of giving something back with the hope and aim that this would help to positively influence their practice in the future. It was an informal chat reflecting on my parents’ end-of-life care with a small group of medical students. A LOROS education facilitator was also present.”

Share your experience

Patient stories

One of our biggest challenges is raising awareness of the work we do. When promoting or raising awareness of our services, what we find most beneficial is when patients, family members and carers, share their experiences with others. This can range from providing information to include in our newsletter, on our website to contributing to newspaper articles.

We are looking for patients and families to share their experiences of LOROS to help raise awareness of the care and services LOROS provides. Would you be willing to share your experience?

Jemma explains her reasons for choosing to share her story:

“It was important to get involved and help provide LOROS with a patient story, primarily to say thank you for the wonderful care my nan received at LOROS before her passing. A lot of people may understandably assume that LOROS is just a place to go when nearing the end of life, but it is so much more than that. Through my article, I wanted to express how grateful my family and I were for the holistic care delivered by the many different, but equally special, teams at LOROS. I hope that other people, touched by their own experiences at LOROS, will be willing to share their story, so that more people can hear about the great care and support network that is LOROS."

Jeanne also recently shared her story and reflects on the process:

“Coping with serious illness and loss is tough, and people react in different ways. After my husband died, I couldn't have any contact with LOROS. It was too painful and raw; I was exhausted and needed all my energy to heal a little. After six years I felt I could reflect on what had happened in a way that might help others with their own grieving processes and also help people to understand the many and various ways, beyond the obvious, that LOROS supports patients and families.”

Find out how you can share your experience

Read some of the heart-warming stories that people have shared

If you are interested in helping with any of the above areas or would like to find out more, please call (0116) 231 8472 or email marketing@loros.co.uk