After almost two decades at our Trust helping improve our palliative care service and make end of life care outstanding, Claire Bates (above), specialist palliative care consultant, moves on this week.

She’s relocating to Suffolk with her husband to live on New Chapel Farm and said: “It’s a beautiful plot with the 900-year-old remains of an old chapel on the land, though I love London so it’s going to be a big adjustment moving to the country.”

The three-acre plot is not a working farm, it’s run as a Christian retreat centre. The couple already spend time there and are making a permanent move to run the centre.

Claire, also our clinical lead for palliative care, is not leaving her clinical work completely; she’s taking a new role at the James Paget Hospital in Great Yarmouth.

She added: “I love my job so I’m very sad to be leaving, but it’s the right time for us. I’ll miss the people the most, especially my palliative care colleagues.”

Having spent some time at Oldchurch Hospital when newly qualified in 1995, Claire returned as the first fulltime consultant for palliative care in 2004 when our service was made up of a very small team.  

Over the years she’s worked with colleagues, including team leader Heather Wright who will be taking over as clinical lead for palliative care, to improve our service.

She said: “We started with hardly anything and have built the team up. A lot of our work is in educating the whole Trust to do things differently as our small team can’t be there for every patient.

“It was amazing when we got rated as outstanding for end of life care at Queen’s Hospital by the CQC in 2020, the highlight of my career. I’m also proud we are rated as good at King George Hospital. Our first ever rating at both sites was ‘requires improvement’.

“I work in palliative care as I’m passionate about bringing the whole person to the forefront of what’s happening in their treatment, asking what’s important to them rather than doing things which may not help or be what they want. It’s important to see them as people, not just patients with diseases, and to listen to their stories, worries, hopes and dreams. We want to help them live well until they die.”

Being good at science and interested in people meant Claire, the first doctor in her family, knew from an early age she wanted to work in medicine. It was a voluntary placement at a local hospice when she was 16 which saw her decide to specialise in palliative care, after being impressed by the people who worked in the field.

Aside from the outstanding rating, some other achievements Claire is proud of include forming the End of Life Care Committee to oversee the transformation of our service; introducing end of life care facilitators to educate in clinical areas; developing partnerships with other services including critical care, neurology and our emergency departments; and being nominated for awards such as the Nursing Times Team of the Year.

Her last day at our Trust is Thursday (23 February).