Hospice boss says being made an OBE ‘doesn’t happen’ to people like her

A hospice chief who started her career in a chip shop has said being made an OBE “doesn’t happen” to people like her.

Rhona Baillie, chief executive of the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow, said it was a “total shock” to be among the King’s Birthday Honours recipients.

She said: “I said to my husband: ‘This doesn’t happen to people like us.’

“That’s what it felt like at first.

“I’ve been working with an outstanding team and I have done for over 20 years at the hospice and it’s just a job that I absolutely love.

“To be rewarded for that was quite a shock for me, to be honest, but I’m very humbled and very grateful.”

Mrs Baillie has been chief executive of the hospice since 2008 after doing the job on an interim basis since 2005.

She was instrumental in leading a campaign to raise £21 million to create a new purpose-built hospice facility in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park in 2016.

But her career started in a chip shop in East Kilbride, having shunned a future in banking, which she said set her up with good people skills.

She eventually went into nursing and trained at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, embarking on a career looking after people at the end of their lives.

Mrs Baillie said she was driven to become a palliative care nurse after a period nursing in Canada.

She said: “I was working in communities, which has always been my passion, and there was absolutely a lack of palliative care there at all.

“When I came back home, I had a real passion to come back into that area of work, and that’s where my love for palliative care started, because it was really sad for me over there to see people dying without dignity.

“So that’s what made me want to make a difference and I have absolutely loved every minute of it.

“I’m going to be accepting this award on behalf of my team.

“You’re only as good as the team you are working with. Everything we have built up has been together.”