Interview: Dr Satbir (Sat) Singh Jassal

In a series of up-close-and-personal interviews we get to look behind the scenes of
Rainbows Children’s Hospice. As we interview employees and volunteers, we learn
more about their work, what makes them tick and why the ‘Building for the Future’
project is vital to help them further their work with the life limited children and young
people of the East Midlands.
In our first interview we speak at length with Dr Satbir (Sat) Singh Jassal, Medical
Director of Rainbows Children’s Hospice.

Dr Satbir (Sat) Singh Jassal, Medical Director of Rainbows

Dr Sat, as he is affectionately known at Rainbows, is a busy man. After our hour he is straight off to Coventry before visiting his practice in Loughborough, Leicestershire, where he is a full time GP with a very busy practice.

Modest to the core, when asked how he copes with two more than full time jobs, he merely smiles. “I have a great team and a great support network,” he says. “And that includes my wife, of course.”

In fact it was his wife who first told Dr Sat all about Rainbows. “My wife came to one of the evening meetings that Rainbows were holding with the community prior to its opening. One of the Trustees was talking about what the Hospice needed and when my wife came home that night she said, ‘Do you know, I’ve found the perfect thing for you’.

At the time I was looking for something a bit more. Something to complement my work as a GP and my wife told me about the fact that there was going to be this new Children’s Hospice opening up in Loughborough. I have always had an interest in Paediatrics and in Palliative care.”

Palliative care, explains Dr Sat, is basically the term used to describe any form of medical care or treatment that concentrates on reducing the severity of disease symptoms, rather than striving to halt, delay, or reverse the progression of the disease itself, or to provide a cure.

With Palliative care, the goal is to prevent and relieve suffering and to improve the quality of life for, in the case of Rainbows, children suffering from serious, complex and life limiting illness.

After hearing about the planned Hospice, Dr Sat got in touch and went to meet them. “I went along and said that I was interested and they said ‘fine, you’ve got the job’.” That’s modesty again but, Dr Sat is adamant, “That was it. There wasn’t anything more. It was only after I’d been appointed that I discovered that we were going to be only the sixth Children’s Hospice to open in the country. It was all very new and very cutting edge; it was an incredibly exciting time to be involved, but of course, by the time I got involved just six months before the Hospice opened its doors, all of the hard work had been done.”

That was 15 years ago. Now Dr Sat is part of a team of four Doctors and a host of specialist nurses and therapists plus specialists in diverse fields such as play and music. When asked why he has stayed for so long, without a pause Dr Sat replies, “Well, it’s because we’ve always been pioneers here. Although other Hospices have opened and run using different ways of working, we’ve always used best practice and the best information around whilst trying to keep our own identity. That’s worked well. In fact we are now at the point where other Hospices around mainland Europe specifically are asking us how we work and practice. I was in Sweden in November 2008 giving a talk on how to set up a Children’s Hospice and discussing the different models used previously. People from across mainland Europe contact us here at Rainbows to talk about how our model of care works.”