Palliative and spiritual care
Introducing Barbara Broome
Barbara comes from a Pacific Island (Fiji) background and lives in South Auckland. She is almost 90 and is passionate about health issues, including being a well-respected advocate for the rights of people with disabilities.
She has a background in nursing and midwifery, with the greater part of her working life spent as a public health nurse, where she was acknowledged for her many health initiatives on marae, particularly with women and children on gang properties.
Barbara has lived with a neurological condition most of her life and has a number of other long-term health conditions, which means she uses a wheelchair for mobility.
Barbara is a foundation member of the Ministry of Health’s Health Consumer Advisory Service. She has also been involved with several other health and disability forums and advisory panels, and is a member of the Palliative Care Advisory Panel.
Barbara is currently receiving palliative care services and is passionate about the benefits these services can bring to enhance the quality of life for people living with life-limiting conditions.
She is an advocate for including spirituality in palliative and end-of-life care and has been active in enabling services to be enhanced in this way through the establishment of the Hub of Hope.
The Hub of Hope New Zealand Trust
The Hub of Hope has been set up to enable spiritual leaders from around New Zealand who have an interest in providing spiritual guidance to people living with life-limiting conditions. The spiritual leaders are volunteers who will support people with their own spirituality needs during their end-of-life journey.
To be part of the Hub of Hope, spiritual leaders need to undergo a training programme that covers the fundamentals of palliative care. This training programme covers similar topics to those covered in the hospice training programme for clinical staff.
In this video, Barbara talks about how her own experience of living with a life-limiting condition has influenced her work, and why she is passionate about enabling spirituality to be included in palliative and end-of-life care.