First cuddle bed arrives at St Andrew's Hospital Toowoomba, donated by Belinda McGowan Foundation
St Andrew's Toowoomba Hospital has received the Garden City’s first cuddle bed, allowing terminally ill patients to share precious final moments with their loved ones.
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Treasure Browne has seen first-hand how essential it is for palliative patients to have their loved ones close during their final weeks, days and hours.
“We had one recently who just passed — she had a little girl who would come in every morning and jump up on the bed with her,” the St Andrew’s Toowoomba Hospital clinical nurse said.
“The child was (primary school-aged), and the patient was in her 30s.”
That vital bonding experience will now be even easier, after the hospital launched its inaugural cuddle bed — that also happens to be the first in Toowoomba.
The bed, which is actually made up of two beds with different mattresses that can be coupled together within a minute, was donated by Warwick’s McGowan family through the Belinda McGowan Foundation.
The 800kg-capacity bed, which was built in Melbourne, features one mattress with state-of-the-art technology to assist patients and another that is designed for comfort sleeping.
“This one is a comfort sleeper, the other one has got ribs in it for air, and this is what we call an air barrier – it’s for looking after very sick patients,” foundation co-founder Bruce McGowan said at the launch on Monday.
“The reason we went to two separate mattresses was actually the patients require different care than the carer or the partner.
“There’s a lot of clinical methodology behind the way we set them up.”
The foundation has now donated more than a dozen cuddle beds to hospitals across Queensland and NSW since it was established in 2023.
Mr McGowan, who was able to comfort his wife Belinda during her passing four years ago thanks to the impromptu work of Warwick Hospital, said St Andrew’s was a special place for his family.
“It’s a token of appreciation for what St Andrew’s, especially the cancer care unit, does for the Downs,” he said.
“We are so blessed to have this facility — they support what we intend to do with the foundation.
“We were born and bred in Warwick, and we’ve all had treatments at some stage through Toowoomba at St Andrew’s, so it’s just about giving back.”
Ms Browne, who works at St Andrew’s cancer care unit, said the cuddle bed would be an enormous upgrade for both patients and their loved ones.
“Since opening in West Ward, we really want to focus on holistic care, and that includes including the families when they need it,” she said.
“Often the families will stay when they are palliating, we just have trundle beds or recliners for them to sleep in, so this is really special.
“Just to see their families to be able to lay up and cuddle with them is special.”
St Andrew’s chief executive Linda Jorgensen said the hospital, which had reached out the foundation initially, hoped to have cuddle beds for all its palliative patients in the future.
“Our hope would be that we can get enough cuddle beds to service all the palliative patients we have at any given point in time, so it would be really lovely,” she said.
“We would love to get a second cuddle bed down the track, we are very fortunate to have this one.
“It’s a great opportunity to use and for families and patients to start to see what that could mean for everybody.”
Mr McGowan said the foundation was already working on funding a new cuddle bed for Toowoomba Hospital, noting local donations had picked up across Toowoomba following coverage from outlets like The Chronicle.
“Our social media following increased dramatically and especially among Toowoomba residents and there were donations from Toowoomba, and so that money is going for one for Toowoomba Hospital,” he said.
“Toowoomba has always had a reputation for being generous, and it’ll continue to flow for other beds and syringe drivers – all the things we donate.”
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Originally published as First cuddle bed arrives at St Andrew's Hospital Toowoomba, donated by Belinda McGowan Foundation
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