When Mountbatten nurse Sue Bell looks back over 16 years of hospice care, it isn’t the clinical charts or the thousands of hours of medical support she remembers most. It’s the power of saying ‘yes, we’ll be there’ when it matters most.

“People often think hospice care is only about dying,” Sue says. “But really, our work is about helping people live well for as long as possible. And often, that starts with saying ‘yes’ when everyone else has said it’s too late or too difficult.”

As Locality Lead for Mountbatten Hampshire’s community team, Sue’s ‘office’ is the living rooms and bedrooms of her patch in the North and Mid Hampshire area. Her team manages the heavy lifting of end-of-life care: symptom management that includes pain, nausea, and the crushing anxiety that often hits families in the middle of the night.

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“Sometimes our presence alone helps a family relax,” Sue explains. “To answer a 3am call with a ‘yes, we’re on our way’ and bring calm to a chaotic, frightened household is a privilege.”

While many picture hospice care happening behind clinical walls, the reality of Mountbatten’s work is found in armchairs, converted dining rooms, and the familiar comfort of home. Mountbatten’s 24/7 service means a nurse like Sue can appear at a doorway in the early hours, a literal lifeline for a family in crisis.

“It is physically and emotionally demanding work,” Sue admits. “But the satisfaction comes from knowing we’ve achieved exactly what that person needed in that moment. Sometimes that’s medical, like stabilising pain. Other times, it’s fulfilling a final wish — like saying ‘yes’ to organising a wedding that needs to happen in weeks, not months.”

Sue recalls one woman whose final wish wasn't to stay in her brother’s Southampton home, where she was being cared for, but to return to her own home in Birmingham, 140 miles away. When her condition plummeted the day before the move, it seemed the journey was impossible. But after a ‘panicked’ call to Mountbatten, Sue’s colleagues worked through the night to stabilise her. They said ‘yes’ when the odds were against them, and the woman made it home, dying the next day exactly where she wanted to be.

“That is what we do,” Sue says. “We are stretched, but when the crunch comes, we drop everything to be there.”

Before joining the community team, Sue worked on Mountbatten Hampshire’s inpatient unit in West End, Southampton, where she first realised that saying ‘yes’ to someone’s personality is just as important as their clinical care. She remembers a mother on the ward, surrounded by her daughters, sharing a bottle of champagne in the early hours of the morning.

“We were all just there, chatting and laughing, when the moment came and she died,” Sue remembers. “The daughters were heartbroken, but then they started to giggle. They said their mum had always been the ‘life and soul of the party’ — and she’d managed to die right in the middle of one. It was exactly the way she should have died.”

These moments — the weddings, the trips home, the midnight champagne — are only possible because Mountbatten’s teams are there, responding at speed, saying ‘yes’ when it matters most.

“We can’t change what’s coming,” says Sue, “but by saying ‘yes’ as often as we can, we can change how it feels.”

Your donation today supports Sue and our expert teams working 24/7 across Hampshire, helping local people live well until their last moments. Thank you.

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