As Christmas Day approaches, we are doing our best at work to try to get as many patients home as possible. After all, nobody want to send Christmas in hospital if they can help it…..

Sadly some of the elderly patients we have in our ward at the moment will probably have a better time in hospital than if they were at home. After all, in hospital they have got people around them that they can talk to any time of the day or night,  Even if they don’t feel like talking, there is the security of knowing that somebody is there, looking out for them.

Last year I worked on Christmas Day, and it was quite a moving experience. All of the patients were given a present of some toiletries which were all nicely wrapped. Unfortunately many of them come into hospital without  any at all, and have no visitors to bring them in either. Although we do have some basic bars of soap and toothpaste etc, the ones they get as presents are much nicer.

The ones that could eat it were given a full English breakfast, and once we had got them looking and smelling lovely with their new toiletries the Ward Sister gathered all of the staff together so that we could go around each Bay and side room to sing Christmas Carols for them all. To me, this was the most moving thing of all. Many of our patients knew the words and sang along with us, as did some of the relatives that were there.

Many of them were crying, probably remembering Christmases past when they were celebrating with their own families One of our young Spanish Nurses was crying as this was the first Christmas she had spent away from her family, and I think by the end of it nearly all of us were crying! It was a very humbling experience.

After this the hot drinks trolley came around with a mince pie for whoever wanted one, and of course they were given a traditional Christmas dinner with all the trimmings plus Christmas pud for afters. We also pulled Christmas crackers with them, read out the corny jokes and gave them their little paper hats to wear!  As the Ward is mainly for elderly patients, many of them didn’t eat much, or weren’t able to pull their own crackers, but just the fact that they did not miss out on a traditional Christmas  just because they were in hospital meant a lot to them. In fact  for some of them, had they been at home it would have been just another lonely day