Can you help Critical care patients and their families?

Dear East Dulwich Forum reader,

I am a junior sister working within Critical Care at King's College Hosptial and am a member of our End of Life focus group in Critical Care. I would like to ask for some help in what is a worthy and important cause...

When patients are nearing the end of their life, we have found that many of our relatives take great comfort from the little details in the care we provide. Something we began doing a few years back was giving family members a knitted or sewn heart pair. One of these hearts remains with the patient and the other is taken by the family member, symbolising the link and love that they have for their relative after they die.

Many relatives have kindly fed back that this act has given great comfort to them.

Usually we nurses knit or sew these hearts and we will continue to do this. We would like to boost our ability to do this by appealing to the public to assist in our cause.

The hearts are usually palm size and of any colour. Attached are examples of the design. We would gladly receive hearts from any keen crafters looking for a project.

If able and interested, please send hearts to

Christine Brown Intensive Care Unit

King's College Hospital

Denmark Hill

SE5 9RS

THANK YOU.

Everyone within Critical Care and A&E Majors at Kings, you all do a superb job, we cannot thank you enough for what you do every day to help patients get better from horrific potentially life changing events and give them a second chance at life.

You did it for me in 2016 and I will always be eternally grateful for everything you did after nearly three weeks in a coma. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.

Mariamadelt - the original post refers to knitted or sewn hearts .

"Something we began doing a few years back was giving family members a knitted or sewn heart pair"