Trisha Goddard’s appearance on Celebrity Big Brother is fighting the stigma of palliative care

9 April 2025, 18:11 | Updated: 10 April 2025, 12:39

"When I say that word, everybody screams and runs away, but it’s symptom treatment,” said Trisha Goddard when the TV presenter was asked about receiving palliative care when entering the Celebrity Big Brother house earlier this week.

I’m not usually an avid-watcher of reality TV but that line caught my attention. As a physiotherapist who, for 13 years, has worked in palliative care at St Christopher’s Hospice, I know exactly what she means. There is a stigma around palliative care and hospices which can lead to delays or avoidance.

St Christopher’s has been tackling myths around palliative care ever since 1967 when it was founded as the first modern hospice by Dame Cicely Saunders – founder of the modern hospice movement.

Trisha’s decision to not only appear on TV, day-in, day-out, but to talk openly about her end of life treatment is a huge opportunity for us to shift the public dial.

When I tell people I work in a hospice specialising in rehabilitative palliative care, they are often surprised. When I tell them we have a gym, they’re even more taken aback.

Hospices aren’t only about death and dying. We help people live well and die well. It’s not just for the final days, but about maximising quality of life and potential for living well day by day, and it’s about being the best you can be despite advancing illness. We support patients and their families throughout that journey, often discharging people when they don’t need us and things are stable.

We focus our care and support on what matters to a person, not just what’s the matter with them. Focusing on people’s wishes and goals is at the heart of palliative care.

And what matters to people is personal and individual. It could be something big but equally it could be something smaller and more routine. For one woman who stayed on our inpatient unit last year after we’d supported her at home, when we asked her “what matters to you?”, her answer was swimming one last time in her local lake. Thanks to some brilliant and brave colleagues, we were able to make that happen. For other people, it’s being able to walk to the shops, or getting out into the garden for some fresh air. For one couple, it was dancing together again.

For Trisha, from what we’ve seen on our TV screens, her answer to that question is showing people “how you can live successfully with cancer and not be so scared of dying that you become scared of living.”

Let us take Trisha’s message and have better and more open conversations about death and dying and about living well until you die.

As Dame Cicely herself said, "You matter because you are you, and you matter to the end of your life, and we will do all we can not only to help you to die peacefully but to live until you die”

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Helena Talbot-Rice leads all the rehabilitation and wellbeing services at St Christopher’s, she is particularly interested in developing the role of rehabilitation in palliative care.

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