By Mireya Gines | Fundraising Development Executive
Thank you for your wonderful support to Irish Hospice Foundation. As you know, ours is the only free at-home Night Nursing service for patients suffering from non-cancer diseases. That’s everything from dementia, to heart disease.
Since the pandemic began, your compassion has helped provide more precious hours of night nursing care than at any other time in our 35-year history.
Our provisional figures tell us that from January to October 2021, we have supported approximately 750 people and their families and provided 2,263 nights of care during that period.
For the first part of 2022, from the 1st of January to the 26th of January, we have seen a 38.5% increase in demand compared with the same period last year.
Your generosity helps us meet this unprecedented increase in demand and brings comfort to so many families accross Ireland...
In her own words our Nurse for Night Care, Annemarie tells us how your kindness brings such comfort and relief to dying people and their families, night after night.
“You’re there for the family as much as the patient… It’s so tiring for families. They’re exhausted. I can’t count the number of times someone has said to me, ‘I got a good night sleep for the first time in weeks because I knew my loved one was in good hands.’”
Since Annmarie began as a Nurse for Night Care at the start of the pandemic, many people who have died, and their loved ones she came to know, have all taken a special place in her heart. But she tells us of one family who she will carry with her forever. It was a mother and daughter, they were devoted to one another.
“The daughter wouldn’t leave her side in those final nights. She was sleeping on a blow-up mattress next to her Mam.”
When the mother took her final breath, Annemarie went to comfort the grief-stricken daughter.
“She’d just lost her Mam. She had nobody else. I sat in the garden with her for two hours. I think it meant the world to her that I was there.
That’s part of nursing, bringing comfort and humanity in those devastating moments.”
— Annemarie, Nurse for Night Care
This year alone we must raise nearly €1 million to meet the need for our Nurses for Night Care service. We couldn’t meet this growing demand without your support as 85% of our income comes from the voluntary donations from generous people like you. Thank you for the comfort and peace that you bring to so many families at a very difficult time
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By Mireya Gines | Fundraising Development Executive
By Mireya Gines | Fundraising Development Executive
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