Background Hospices have traditionally been seen as experts in end of life care. But we also have expertise in many additional areas (Hospice UK. What services does a hospice offer? [Internet]. Hospice UK) including volunteer management, data and digital and managing collaborative relationships with partners such as the NHS. As a large hospice, we are keen to share our expertise, even incorporating this into our strategic aims, although we recognise that hosting visits needs to be properly resourced.

Aims The aim of our review was to quantify the amount and type of professional visits we host, where the visitors are from, how much time they spend at the hospice and what feedback we receive. The data will be used to inform discussion about how we manage visitors in the future.

Methods In April 2023 we began collecting data about visitors, defining professional visitors as people who attend the hospice with the specific aim of learning from us about an area of our work. They are additional and distinct from the learners who attend our educational events and programmes. We included virtual and face-to-face attendance. In April 2024 we summarised and analysed the first year of data and presented our results internally.

Results During the year we received a total number of 64 visitors, 53% were nursing or medical learners. Visitors also came with the intent of learning about psychological support, education provision, data and digital, physiotherapy, leadership and management, quality assurance, art therapy and social work. The total number of hours of visits was 4,455 equating to 594 working days.

Conclusion As an organisation we recognise that we need to be supporting learning of our system and sector partners. We wish to continue to do this. The service evaluation allows us to highlight this aspect of our work and decide how to make it sustainable.