Karen Lanaghan | Local Hero

Karen Lanaghan is one of our Top Local Heroes from our social media campaign Depictions of DN. We had the pleasure of catching up with Karen recently and got to find out a bit more of what she did during the pandemic in her role.

Karen works at the Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals as an End-of-life Nurse. Karen spoke of how she felt about her role, “I think I see it as an extremely rewarding and very privileged job to be able to support patients and their relatives at the end of life, you can turn that negative situation into a positive experience. It’s very much about that person, and what's important to the patient and to their relatives.”

Karen shared with us how different working in the hospital had been since the pandemic started and the challenges her and the team have faced, she said “Normally there's open visiting, and patients and relatives are able to be together as they take their last breath. That’s been the one of the biggest challenges, not being able to do that.”

During lockdown in 2020 when the community were struggling with their loved ones being in hospital, without being able to visit because of Covid restrictions, Karen shared with us a beautiful story of ‘The Comfort Hearts’. The idea being that the community knitted/Crocheted them and passed them along to the hospital. A patient would then be given one and their family at home would receive one too. “This was a means of connection, but it was something that actually gave people a lot of comfort.”

We asked Karen if she could share a story which represented how her role has been during the pandemic. 

Karen shared a story of a couple, she said, “We had an absolute beautiful couple who I had the privilege of knowing personally. But they'd been together for so many years and never been apart and had got quite a lot of family members.”

“The lovely lady was able to come home, so we were doing a lot of individual visiting quite regularly. The husband was absolutely distraught that they were apart and couldn't come in to see her. They all got comfort heart and they had that connection. She had it just in the breast pocket. She eventually did go home, and she then passed away. Her husband contracted COVID and he died. So, within a very short period of time they both died together and both are buried with the comfort heart.”

We asked Karen how it felt to be nominated for a Depictions of DN, she said, “it comes as a privilege. I'm extremely privileged to do the job that I do. I absolutely love my job. And as much as it's been extremely challenging, it's about putting yourself in that place of that person. I suppose I am sort of touched, but I don't think I do any different to what anybody else, just to be honest.”

As our chat with Karen came to a close, she spoke of what has kept her going throughout the pandemic: “What’s always been the back of my mind, no matter what we've done, and no matter what we've delivered is the fact that what can we do to make it a little bit more easier for people.”

Our Top Local Heroes have taken part in a film shoot with artist James Lockey as a way to profile their work and celebrate their achievements. Along with a beautiful film score composed by Hayley Youell, the film was featured in this year’s DN Festival of Light.

Watch the Depictions of DN Film by James Lockey here:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyzO1E-FF6Y