Where healing happens: A patient's letter of gratitude

1 May 2025

Patient Experience Week is an annual celebration of health care staff who impact patient experience, every day. At St John of God Health Care, we pride ourselves on providing our patients with high quality, person-centred, compassionate care across all areas of our organisation.

This Patient Experience Week, we share a heartfelt letter from a patient who found not just care, but community, in the Ursula Frayne Unit at St John of God Mt Lawley Hospital:

To all those who make up the staff and specialists of the Ursula Frayne Unit,

The words “thank you” are not enough to express the real debt I owe you all and the experience of the Ursula Frayne Unit. 

I arrived still reeling from weeks in ICU, very sick and mentally unable to cope with the emergency which came completely out of the blue. I was at my lowest point ever, my most vulnerable, my most despairing and my most fearful because the world and my place in it would never be the same. 

Little by little the magic that is here has healed me so I accept my future with some grace and confidence. I have rediscovered the “old” me that circumstances apparently cannot change and reconnected with a part of me, not new, but denied for so long. My singing is my voice. This alone makes the stay so worthwhile. 

What is the magic of Ursula Frayne? The physical – it is a small community where we have to interact with each other: for the (great) meals, where joining in activities triggers laughter, stimulates brain power and creates physical challenges. It is nothing like a hospital. 

That said, it is you, the staff that makes this a place where healing happens. You are professional, incredibly skilled and empathetic, and you love what you do. You plot and plan each healing step of the way. You quietly record behaviours, the medications and physical obs and meet individual mental and emotional needs. You are friendly, there is a lot of bantering and laughter. You are a close knit team who genuinely like each other. I have felt cared for by “best friends", who I can trust want the best for me and celebrate with me the healing steps along the way, who can tease delightfully or counsel sportingly. 

I read somewhere that, to teach young ones to fly, the mother eagle pushes them out of the nest and as they fall, she flies down and catches them on her back to return to the nest so high in the trees. Then she does it again until they are independent. I see this in your mission – to watch us take the next step, perhaps fail, but you pick us up and try again until we can. 

So “even eagles need a push” and you push to heal. This “little one” is able to move on because of you all. 

Thank you, goodbye and god bless.

*The name of the patient has been suppressed for patient confidentiality purposes. The patient provided approval to St John of God Health Care to publish this letter.