Lyn introduces himself and explains his background

Letter from the New Chairman   25.7.2025

I am honoured and privileged to take on the chair of Chiltern Compass. After 6 years of unrelenting effort under the chairmanship of its founder, Chris Foote, and subsequently Bryn Neal, it has achieved a great deal and is in a good position to move forward and achieve even more.

My background is in medicine (as a GP and ophthalmologist), bereavement support volunteer (for Cruse Bereavement Support) and more recently as co-ordinator of a campaign to improve palliative care at home during the recent pandemic.

At the start of the pandemic I, along with several friends and colleagues, set up a campaign for those people who, for a variety of reasons, preferred to stay at home with life-threatening Covid-19 infection, which we called – ‘In My Own Bed Please’.

Part of the campaign involved writing blogs in response to the findings of the rapid review panel set up by the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine (part of the Department of Primary Care at Oxford University), which was looking at relevant new research findings relating to palliative care and Covid-19.

The blogs were published and are still available on the CEBM website under the heading of ‘Palliative Care’ as well as the findings of the panel. In addition to the blogs we wrote accompanying imagined contrasting scenarios to illustrate our comments.

The most significant finding was the importance of an Advance Care Plan (ACP) when circumstances change rapidly and with high levels of uncertainty. This led to the setting up of a support service to help people who do not have a life-limiting illness to write an Advance Care Plan.

An ACP is a powerful tool to influence and guide health care providers in our end-of-life care. It gives us some control over how our care is managed if we lose the ability to communicate effectively and makes it easier for our loved ones, both during our final days and after our death.

Read the ACP blog and the relevant scenarios – depicting how things might go, with and without an ACP.

Chiltern Compass has now taken over the ACP support service and it is currently accessible using the booklet ‘In My Own Bed Please?’ available on the Shop page, to either download or purchase as a hard copy.

We will be writing a regular newsletter, published on the website and sent to the ‘Friends of Chiltern Compass’ group to update you on developments as they arise.

Lyn Jenkins