Last week Strathcarron Hospice’s head of education, Dr Sally Boa welcomed a visit from a French resource nurse Lyn Silove. Many of you know Strathcarron is very much in the hearts of the local community, and respected as very special place providing an providing an exceptional service to those who pass through our doors.
However, you may not know that our reputation travels far beyond the boundaries of Forth Valley, Kilsyth and Cumbernauld! Our name is known and respected across the globe, and in the last couple of years alone we have welcomed guests from Italy, Spain, France, Iceland, Serbia and even New Zealand, to study our model of care and learn from us. To add to our international fame the documentary about out extraordinary day care patients went global at five film festivals in places as diverse as Prague, Texas, New Zealand and Helsinki.
Lyn was working on a project to design a daycare model that can be implemented as part of her course with European Association for Palliative Care. As her visit drew to a reluctant end, Lyn told us: “We don’t currently have hospice daycare facilities in France, but I would love to see this service offered. The warmth and kindness that flows through Strathcarron is very unique, and if I could just find a way to bottle that and take it home to France, working a bit of that special magic into our vision of daycare model, how wonderful that would be.”
We could not be happier that this is the impression Strathcarron leaves on our guest, and hopefully everyone else who comes through our doors, be they patients, families, staff, volunteers and visitors.