Life, Death and Biscuits: Inspiring stories from a Critical Care Nurse

Anthea Allen is a senior critical care sister at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South West London. During the pandemic she wrote a series of emails, exploring the experience of nurses through this unprecedented time in history.

Her writing was published and her book Life, Death and Biscuits became a Sunday Times Best Seller. Anthea has used her book and subsequent Instagram account @lifedeathbiscuits as a platform to celebrate nurses and the remarkable work they do.

Working in a department of technological innovation, advanced surgery, Medic*tion and intervention, Anthea likes to care for someone at the end of their life, offering them a good and dignified death when the time is right. She supports family through this process and has facilitated the discharge of patients from critical care to their own home to die.

Anthea’s own father died in July 2023 and she was able to facilitate a good death for him in his own bed, at home, surrounded by family as he wanted it to be.

Anthea regularly talks about her work through the pandemic, about caring for people at the end of their life and strives to highlight the phenomenal role of critical care nurses

She lives in Balham, London with her wife, has two children and four cats. She is a marathon runner and is the nurse recruitment lead for her critical care department. Anthea describes herself as “mother to many”

For more information about Let's Discuss Death please visit www.letsdiscussdeath.co.uk

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