Belinda McGowan Foundation: Charity raising funds to install ‘cuddle bed’ for palliative patients in St Andrew’s Toowoomba Hospital

Bruce McGowan was able to say goodbye to his wife Belinda the right way, and he wants to make possible in Toowoomba through the delivery of a $25,000 bed to a city hospital. How you can help:

Bruce McGowan held his wife Belinda in his arms as she took her final breath in Warwick Hospital four years ago — an experience he wouldn’t trade for the world.

“When you share and hold that person and actually see the life go out of them, it’s a very calming experience — it was for me anyway,” he said, reflecting on the hospital’s decision to push together two beds to allow them to cuddle.

Bruce and Belinda McGowan. Belinda died in Bruce's arms in Warwick Hospital on May 21, 2021.

Mr McGowan, who has since turned his late wife’s memory into a massive statewide initiative, is hoping to give that same sense of closure to Toowoomba families in the form of fundraising a double-sized palliative care bed for St Andrew’s Hospital.

The specially-made “cuddle beds”, which are now in hospitals and aged care facilities across Queensland, allow a patient to live out their last days in comfort with a family member or caregiver lying next to them.

Mr McGowan said Belinda, who died from lung cancer, had conceived the idea while the couple spent their last days together.

“In the process of being close together before she lost consciousness, she said, ‘we need to provide this opportunity for everybody, all I ever wanted was to be held by my husband’,” he said.

The Belinda McGowan Foundation was founded following her death to fundraise the $25,000 beds, which are designed and built in Melbourne to meet each venue’s needs.

“They are two single beds, palliative care single beds that come together as one — one of them has a specialty mattress on one side with an air acute mattress for palliative care patients,” Mr McGowan said.

Examples of the cuddle beds built for the Belinda McGowan Foundation to go into various hospitals across Queensland for palliative care use.

“The other mattress is a comfort sleeper, so if you’re a carer and you want to be in hospital with your partner, you actually get a decent sleep and it’s comfortable.

“The main framework and everything is built in Melbourne and we can get it built to whatever specification suits that hospital.

“All the nitty-gritty little parts can be bought from your local hardware store almost (and) we build them fairly robust – they have a 400kg capacity, but the pumps and motors can handle 600.”

There are now 13 cuddle beds across a dozen hospitals, which Mr McGowan said he been welcomed by patients and their loved ones.

“Sometimes we’ve seen a case where we had a younger terminal mum with four kids on the bed, and we’ve seen elderly patients having their grandchildren there,” he said.

“We get a lot of feedback about (how) it provides family with that connection with their loved one.”

Jen Crook, whose grandmother Jenny Robinson passed away in a cuddle bed at Warwick Hospital in January, said it was reassuring to know she was comfortable as she passed.

Warwick's Jen Crook with her late grandmother Jenny Robinson.

“It gave us a little comfort because (the bed) has the air mattress or the padding on top, so we knew that she was comfortable,” the 26-year-old said.

“We still were able to sit beside her and say goodbye and she just looked comfortable, not like she was in any pain.

“There was a sign saying that it had been donated by Bruce himself to the hospital bed, and knowing Bruce myself (through work), I thought it was quite nice having that there.”

St Andrew’s announced this week it would install the new cuddle bed in its new cancer care ward, to blend “essential medical functionality with the warmth of human connection”.

Mr McGowan said all donations to the foundation went directly to either a new cuddle bed or providing syringe drivers to hospitals.

He said the charity had also been in talks with Beauaraba aged care facility in Pittsworth to provide one.

Residents wanting to donate for either the new bed at St Andrew’s or Beauaraba can head to the website and reference either Toowoomba or Pittsworth when they give the money.

Originally published as Belinda McGowan Foundation: Charity raising funds to install ‘cuddle bed’ for palliative patients in St Andrew’s Toowoomba Hospital