Rennie Grove welcomes new Director of Nursing and Patient Services
Rennie Grove Hospice Care has appointed Samantha Howard as its new Director of Nursing and Patient Services.
Sam has 34 years’ experience as a dual registered children’s and adults’ nurse spending 26 years of her career as a children’s nurse at Great Ormond Street and Watford General Hospitals.
After seven years in the Clinical Homecare sector where she was Director of Nursing for a UK-wide team of nurses providing care for 80,000 patients at home, Sam joined Rennie Grove in December 2018 as Head of Children’s and Family services.
She takes up the most senior clinical role at Rennie Grove at the same time as the charity launches its strategy for 2019-2022.
Commenting on her appointment Sam Howard said: “I am very pleased to be starting my new role at an exciting time for Rennie Grove. Our new strategy contains a number of aims designed to meet national challenges including more people living longer, an increasing number of people nearing the end of life being inappropriately admitted into hospital or receiving unsatisfactory care in a care home and a lack of coordinated support for carers.
“Our plan is to address these challenges by supporting GPs and healthcare professionals to identify patients who would benefit from our services earlier so that more people can plan better for the end of life. We have been accepted onto a programme that means we will become accredited to deliver training to care home staff to improve end-of-life experience for their residents. These aims are underpinned by our commitment to personalising our services for patients and those caring for them.
“Much of this will depend on expanding our range of family support services and in particular the Supporting Hands programme that offers practical and emotional assistance to patients and their carers delivered by team of trained volunteers, supervised by our qualified therapists.
“On a personal note I am looking forward to influencing the development of children’s and family support services and making sure that we meet the needs of all patients who need our care.”