Dear Sir,

I am writing in response to a Letter to the Editor from Susan Starling, published on September 6, about our palliative care service at Agape House.

Our nurses, doctors and volunteers in Agape House provide an amazing service for people who require palliative treatments and therapies, or end-of-life care. It is, however, no secret that the Agape House facility needs to be replaced.

It separates this caring, more peaceful service from the hectic and acute institutional care areas in King Edward VII Memorial Hospital’s general and acute care wings, but it suffers from being restricted in size and design, and from being advanced in age.

Modern palliative care facilities have private rooms to allow families to gather with their loved ones, communal areas, and are designed with storage space for equipment, supplies, etc.

A new facility is an option that Friends of Hospice, which fundraises and provides volunteers for Agape House, has spoken about to the Bermuda Hospitals Board. So how do we start the process?

First, we need to know what size and what kind of facility we need. Questions about how the service is provided in Bermuda, what space is needed and what role home hospice can play are being asked as part of the BHB’s Clinical Services Planning project. This project is looking at how the BHB can best care for the community in the present environment and it will deliver recommendations on all its services by January 2018.

I would like to also address the issue of linens raised by Ms Starling. We are sorry poor-quality linen was used for Ms Starling’s friend. Our laundry staff work hard to clean, dry, press and fold about 5,500 pounds of linen a day — that’s about two million pounds a year.

The team noted that there have been some fluctuations in the quality of our sourced linens, which they are addressing, but quality-control checks are undertaken each day in the laundry department and it is also expected that nursing staff will check linens before they make the beds. Poor-quality linens should be sent back to the laundry department and not used.

Since publication of Ms Starling’s letter, a team inclusive of Facilities, Laundry, Friends of Hospice and Agape House staff have walked through Agape and identified where improvements can be made while the Clinical Services Plan is completed. We certainly want a facility and supplies that match the quality of our staff at Agape House, and will do all we can to achieve this.

VENETTA SYMONDS

Chief executive officer

Bermuda Hospitals Board