Hospital staff help grant wedding wishes to end of life patients
A team of caring hospital staff is appealing for local community and businesses to support its plans to grant wedding wishes to end of life patients.
For many couples, planning their dream wedding can take months of preparation – from finding the right dress, organising flowers, booking a photographer and arranging all the decorations.
But for others, time is precious, and a group of North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust staff are helping end of life patients fulfil their wedding day dreams in hospital.
Natasha Steels-Webb is a Critical Outreach Nurse Practitioner, and after seeing first-hand how helping to grant patients’ wishes can have a positive impact, she and colleagues have come up with the idea of a portable ‘Wedding Box’.
She said: “Myself and a colleague decided to create the wedding box after a patient we were caring for had become very unwell and it was clear she was not going to recover. She had been with her current partner for many years, but they just hadn't got around to getting married - and this was something they both wanted.
“Although we were able to make this happen, with help from all the relevant teams, we felt that we could do something to make future weddings even more special with decorative items, artificial flowers and balloons on standby for such an event.”
A social media appeal was launched, and items and offers of donations flooded in. There are now two Wedding Boxes – where the contents can be used at short notice – at Peterborough City Hospital and Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon, which staff can access via the Chaplaincy Team.
Natasha and her colleagues are now looking to build in this by providing a directory of cake makers, photographers and any businesses providing a wedding-related service that could be called upon at short notice.
Wedding dresses, chair covers and decorative items are also on the wish-list.
Natasha added: “It is difficult to put into words what a difference these weddings make – but you can see the appreciation in the eyes of the patient and their loved ones that you have been able to make a difference – not purely because it is your job, but because you truly care.”
If any individual or business would like to assist the Wedding Box initiative, they can contact Natasha Natasha.steels-webb@nhs.net
Critical Outreach Nurse Practitioners Lois Kendall and Natasha Steels-Webb with some of the Wedding Box items.