Teila Loci: Everyone has a right to the death they want, importance of palliative care

A Mildura nurse passionate about helping terminal patients die peacefully has spoken about the importance of palliative care.

Teila Loci began her journey to being a palliative care nurse after her 2014 graduate year in nursing.

During the time she spent working at the Bacchus Marsh and Ballarat hospitals she began to work with palliative care patients.

“I developed a love and a passion for helping patients die peacefully and sharing the memories of them with their families,” she said.

After completing her grad year Ms Loci moved to Mildura and took up the position of a palliative care nurse at the Mildura Base Public Hospital before becoming a palliative care nurse educator for the Mildura hospital.

“Being a nurse educator involves teaching and educating the staff on how to provide care and support but I also educate the families on palliative care, what they should look for and what we can do for them,” she said.

Ms Loci said that her job is a sad one but a “rewarding” one as well.

“The job is to make sure that every patient has a good death,” she said.

“It is the last memory that the family will have of their loved one and we need to ensure that patient is pain free and dying in the way they want to be.”

National palliative care week at the Mildura Base Public Hospital. Teila Loci and her team find palliative care nursing an extremely rewarding job.

Teila Loci finds palliative care nursing an extremely rewarding job.

Ms Loci easily recalled a favourite memory from working in palliative care. She said that during her grad year she was looking after an elderly gentleman who was so grateful to have the support of palliative care.

“We ended up being able to get him home so he could spend some more time with family and then he came back to the ward and the family were just so grateful and the patient was so happy. It was so rewarding to be with them as he passed and share in their grief but know that I helped to make this time a little bit easier,” she said.

Mildura Hospital has about 30 palliative care nurses as well as many other staff who help the department function.

It has set rooms for palliative patients and they even have a large mural of the Murray painted on the wall for patients to look at as they pass.

“We have that mural so that they (the patients) can look at something beautiful as they die,” Ms Loci said.

Experiencing the grief of the family when a loved one passes is one of the things that Ms Loci said is the hardest part of her job.

Ms Loci said that she wants people to know that palliative care isn’t just for people who have days or weeks to live, people can engage with palliative care services for years before they eventually pass.

“We want patients to have the best quality of life possible before they die,” she said.

This year’s theme for Palliative Care Week is ‘It’s your right’ and Ms Loci said that this is what’s at the core of palliative care.

“It is the patient's right to access palliative care at any stage of their journey to be pain free or to die where and how they want.”