Dr. Robin Love (light blue shirt) oversees a home visit by a Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital palliative care team member in Nepal who's caring for a cancer patient. (Robyn Dunstan)

By Ian Holmes

calling Dr. Love

Nanaimo palliative care champion honoured for impacts made at home and abroad

May 29, 2024 | 4:35 PM

NANAIMO — His life’s work of easing the suffering of others and their loved ones garnered a highly respected Lantzville man a prestigious honour.

Dr. Robin Love, 68, will receive a 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians at a ceremony on the evening of Thursday, May 30 in Toronto.

Considered a pioneer in palliative care on the mid-Island, the recently retired medical director of palliative care at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital said the designation means a lot to him.

“It really does, I was completely surprised. I had no idea that I had even been nominated for this, so I was very surprised and very pleased to hear that,” Dr. Love told NanaimoNewsNOW.

Dr. Love built palliative care from the ground up in Nanaimo not long after arriving in the Harbour City.

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He opened his Nanaimo family practice in 1988, offering him an up-close look while working with patients in his office and the hospital.

Noticing a lack of expertise in the field and resources at the time, Dr. Love realized formalized palliative care was a necessity in Nanaimo.

“I can remember coming home one day saying to my wife, ‘you know I have to start a palliative care program, I can’t wait until I’m older, there’s too much suffering going on now.'”

In the early 1990s, he started the palliative care unit on the fifth floor of Nanaimo Regional General Hospital (NRGH) with a six-bed unit, which years later re-located to the hospital’s bottom floor with the now dozen beds still in operation.

The palliative care unit at NRGH is located on the ground floor off Dufferein Cres. Dr. Love said the unit is typically always full. (Ian Holmes/NanaimoNewsNOW)

“We not only have an excellent program providing good symptom management and care for the patients and families, we also have a nice location,” Dr. Love said.

In addition to crediting staff at Nanaimo’s palliative department, he emphasized the critical contributions of longstanding Nanaimo Community Hospice Society volunteers for their support to their patients.

Hospice beds for those not sick enough for palliative care, yet not well enough to be at home have not existed in the Nanaimo area, Dr. Love noted.

He’s pleased to hear hospice beds will be added to Island Health’s large long-term care home project to be built in Lantzville.

Having a significant impact on the health and well-being for the people in the greater Nanaimo area is not all Dr. Love is known for.

He formalized a partnership in 2006 with Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital in Nepal and has made eleven trips to the South Asian country teaching and mentoring health professionals involved in palliative care.

Dr. Love is a director of Two Worlds Cancer Collaboration, which supports various programs in Nepal he helped initiate.

“We support them with education and funds every month we send them money for medication that patients can’t afford. We also do some salary support for the physicians and nurses there,” Love said. “It’s a very successful program, very busy, accomplishing a lot.”

Dr. Robin Love (white shirt centre) mentors doctors and nurses from the Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital palliative care team. (Richard Tran)

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Ian.holmes@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @reporterholmes