12/03/2026
Congratulations to Marie Donnelly who has become one of the first Advanced Nurse Practitioners to work in palliative care in Northern Ireland. With over 30 years’ experience in Nursing and palliative care, Marie recently completed a Masters in Advanced Nurse Practice at Ulster University, sponsored by Marie Curie.
Leading end of life charity Marie Curie welcomed this partnership initiative, saying that it was
“the way forward for palliative care nursing”.
Now qualified Marie supports and cares for patients who have palliative and end of life care needs, with the focus on the community setting across the Omagh and Fermanagh areas of the Western Health and Social Care Trust. This new role allows Marie to work autonomously, taking patient histories, carrying out physical examinations, prescribing and using her expert knowledge and clinical judgement to treat patients.
Speaking about her new role Marie said:
“I would firstly like to thank Marie Curie for providing me with this opportunity to complete this qualification and for the support of my Western Trust colleagues in creating this new role in specialist palliative care.
“This is an exciting new role where as part of a multidisciplinary team, I work alongside GP’s and Community nurses, including District Nurses, Marie Curie Community Nurses and Foyle Hospice palliative care nurses, to offer advice and support to care for patients with complex palliative and end of life care needs. Most importantly I work together with patients, families and those important to them, in the delivery of their care.
“The main focus of my role is to ensure that the person’s needs are met, be that pain and symptom management or emotional needs, whereby I can autonomously assess the person, diagnosis and provide treatment.
“Other strategic elements of my role includes the provision of education and improving services to ensure that we as healthcare professionals are providing the best possible evidence based care to the people in the Omagh and Fermanagh areas now and in to the future.”
Paula Heneghan, Associate Director of Services at Marie Curie Northern Ireland, said:
“Marie’s qualification comes from two years of specialised training, supported by Marie Curie with grant funding from the Community Fund and collaboratively developed with the Western Trust. Together, we created the Advanced Nurse Practitioner position to enhance palliative and end-of-life care services. As a result of Marie’s work, patients now have more options for where they receive care, and more people can spend their final days at home. This teamwork is helping to reduce strain on the broader health and social care system and is bringing significant benefits to both patients and their families.”
At the very heart of Marie’s specialist role is the patient and their family and the impact that it has on them and we are very grateful to a mother who recently shared her experience:
Helen said:
“There were numerous occasions when Marie’s involvement made things so much easier, in a very challenging situation. Providing this type of end of life care at home to my son was a total unknown for me and at each stage, I was met with documentations which I know were necessary but did add additional burden on me as a carer, but this changed when Marie, the Advanced Nurse Practitioner was involved.
“One particular example was the reviewing of medication which Marie was able to prescribe. It made such a difference to have her here that day. Her skills and qualifications meant I didn’t have to arrange for someone to collect the chart from the house, bring to the doctor, wait for it to be signed and then bring back to the house before the district nurses arrived. This took a lot of pressure from me and also meant I didn’t miss out on valuable time at home with my son Ian, just to maintain his medication records.
“The whole oncology experience was extremely traumatic, especially for my son but Marie was fantastic at explaining and on many occasions, just listening. Having her present helped so much in bringing a peace and understanding.
“Having the Advanced Nurse Practitioner based in the community, meant Ian was able to remain at home and his dying wish was fulfilled. I genuinely do believe, without the community team support Ian would have died many weeks, if not months, earlier than he did which gave us valuable and precious time together. My sincere thanks to the entire community team and especially community Advanced Nurse practitioner, Marie.”