Grampians Health’s new palliative care manager is carrying a valuable life lesson into her role. 

Larna Woodyatt has worked in the critical care areas of intensive care and organ donation for the past two decades. 

Early in her career, Ms Woodyatt remembers working with an emergency department physician who told her ‘you only get one chance to give someone a good death’. 

The profound guidance has been a lingering constant throughout Ms Woodyatt’s career and remains just as significant today. 

While intensive care nursing was the forefront of Ms Woodyatt’s career, she has spent the past 10 years working as an organ donor co-ordinator for Grampians Health and DonateLife Victoria, supporting organ donors and their families through some of the most difficult and emotional moments of their lives. 

Ms Woodyatt said her previous role had provided important preparation for working with the palliative care team. 

“While I have been a specialist in end-of-life care through my role as an organ donation specialist, I have never worked specifically in palliative care,” she said. 

“Being a manager is more about supporting the people who provide the clinical care and understanding the operational and strategic side of things. 

“I feel it can be helpful as a manager, not being a specialist or expert in the area, as I don’t already have pre-conceived ideas or opinions of what palliative care is and isn’t. I can ask lots of curious questions seeking to understand and learn from the team. What I do know is that it is such a privilege to be part of the end of someone’s life.”

Ms Woodyatt said she believed palliative care was a nursing speciality that particularly attracted a special type of person who could consistently be part of providing end-of-life care. 

“That’s what attracted me to this role, getting to play a part in supporting the people who care for  those who are at end-of-life,” she said.

“For the nurses who do this work every day, while it can be burdensome sometimes to carry the load, it absolutely is a privilege and palliative care nurses are the epitome of that.” 

Ms Woodyatt said the message from the ED physician that continued to resonate for her was that health professionals were not able to repeat the process if it did not go well. 

“As health care professionals I hope every staff member does all they can to make sure that when the time comes, patients can die well and in the way they would have liked,” she said.

Grampians Health provides three streams of palliative care services that Ms Woodyatt oversees.  

Gandarra Palliative Care Unit is an 11-bed palliative care in-patient service in Ballarat; Grampians Palliative Care Consultancy, also based in Ballarat; and Grampians Palliative Care Community in Horsham. 

The teams care for and support patients and families through the entire Grampians region. 

Ms Woodyatt, who has also worked in governance and risk management, has a team of about 16 under her supervision across the three teams. 

She said she was enjoying the challenge of working in a different space, with different people. 

“I am a clinician at heart and still very patient-focused and I want to understand the patient journey and what that means for the staff as well,” she said. 

“I hope that makes me an approachable and relatable manager. 

“I’ve loved meeting a whole range of different people while I’ve been navigating and learning about completely different areas of the organisation.” 

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