SAY the word ‘hospice’ and an image of a sterile and sad place springs to mind but the in-patients unit at St Richard’s could not be further from this picture.

The secure wing has a surprisingly calm atmosphere, with a wide corridor leading to a central atrium where patients, friends and family can sit comfortably to read a book or listen to the grand piano being played.

From here the corridor splits left and right to the south facing bedrooms.

The hospice has 15 beds, six in three-bed rooms, two in a double room and the rest in single rooms, and each one has been designed with the patient in mind.

Low windows enable the patient to look out at the garden when they are lying in bed; oxygen and suction are hidden behind wooden panels in the wall; each room has its own outside terrace and the doors onto it are wide enough to wheel a bed outside.

A curtain can be pulled across the door if patients and their families want privacy and there is a mini fridge by each bed to keep food, drink and medicine.

Sally Knowles, hospice matron, said: “Whatever you do in your normal life will be carried on here, we try to continue it as much as we can.

“If people want to eat at three in the morning that is fine. It is a happy place and a family place. We try to respond to all the needs a patient and family may have, be that pain and symptom control, physical problems, spiritual, emotional, social or intellectual.”

Staff at the hospice, in Wildwood Drive, Worcester, reminisce about some of the more unusual requests they have had from patients.

One woman’s biggest wish was to see her horse before she died, so friends brought it to the hospice garden for her to see.

Another would only come to the hospice if her life-long companion, her springer spaniel, could come with her. Arrangements were made and the spaniel stayed at the hospice with the woman until she died.

Visitors are able to come at any time during the day or night and there is a small kitchen for them to make their own drinks and two en-suite visitor bedrooms.

An army of volunteers is on hand to make drinks, read to patients, make beds, arrange flowers, write letters and pop to the shops. People don’t just stay in their final days, 30 per cent are admitted for symptom control and then return home. There are also complementary therapists and hairdressers, and the chaplain caters for all faiths.

For more details, visit strichards.org.uk or to donate visit justgiving.com/ wn4strichards.