AUDREY Fulton has spent 25 years on permanent night shift caring for people at the end of their lives.

She is one of the dedicated team at Paisley's St Vincent's Hospice, which this year is celebrating 25 years of caring.

Audrey, and nursing colleagues Helen MacDonald and Pat McIntosh, have all been at the Renfrewshire hospice from day one, and that commitment and experience has helped them provide first class care, round the clock.

Audrey, an auxiliary nurse, said: "Night time can be quite a difficult time for patients. During the day there's a lot going on, but at night you're left with your own thoughts and you're lying thinking about what's going to happen to you.

"People want to talk at night, that's when people become quite frightened.

"You just listen. They wonder 'how is my husband or wife going to manage?' 'What's going to happen to me?'

"Listening is the biggest thing. The very first thing in communication is eye contact with your patients, and look as though you've all the time in the world.

"I've always stuck with that. Patients need to know you're the person they want to talk to."

Her colleague Helen, a nurse who is now practice educator, agrees.

She said: "Communication underpins everything.

"For people that come into this environment, the people we care for, being listened to and having the opportunity to talk to people and getting the feeling that they are being listened to is really important."

For Pat McIntosh, working at the hospice has proved impossible to give up.

She retired as a nurse two years ago but within a few months she was back in, helping where she was needed and taking her turn in the hospice's bank of auxiliary nurses.

She said: "I still feel a connection to the hospice, because we were here from the beginning.

"I was involved in fundraising to start the hospice. It's very hard to let go. I tried, and for a few months I didn't come in at all, but it's like a magnet, it's such a wonderful place.

"When people asked me where I work, I felt so proud to say St Vincent's.

"Knowing how it was a wee seed that became a dream, then a goal, and then we reached it and made it happen.

"Someone said to me they thought the staff were hand-picked for here.

"That's because the training gets passed on down the line. The care here is wonderful."

Between them, the ladies have clocked up 75 years service to the hospice.

From humble beginnings, when nursing staff had to hold fundraising events just to get the cash to buy beds and baths and other vital equipment, St Vincent's, led by its chief executive Kate Lennon, is now leading the way in providing first-class palliative care.

But it relies on fundraising to achieve its aims, and this year is hoping to raise £1 million to mark its 25th anniversary.

And all three nurses have been involved with madcap fundraising from the start, including pushing hospital beds through Paisley town centre, and holding musical events in Glasgow Central Station, featuring nurses dressed as mermaids ... in baths.

Audrey said: "We did all these daft things, pushing beds through Paisley with people lying in them. Really daft things. We took over Central Station one time."

Pat added: "It had never been done before. We did it twice, in fancy dress."

All three nurses say that working at the hospice gives them a strong bond with the families who come to them for help as their loved ones face life-limiting and terminal illness.

Helen said: "That's the difference between working in an acute hospital and working here.

"You have more of a connection with the whole family. Here, we continue the support right through into a person's bereavement, in whatever way we can."

Pat added: "I met a young man the other day, his mum passed away here.

"He came up to me and said, 'I don't know what I would have done without the help of the hospice.' He's still coming here a year on.

"People still come from years ago and say 'you nursed my mum, you nursed my dad.' There's so many people over the years."

ewan.fergus@eveningtimes.co.uk