194: Yes To Life Show with Robin Daly MBE - Episode 194194: Yes To Life Show with Robin Daly MBE - Episode 194
UK Health Radio Podcast
Robin Daly talks with oncology nurse and coach Aga Kehinde about re-humanising cancer care, supporting emotionally exhausted staff, and the place of faith and personal meaning in living with cancer. The discussion questions rigid protocols and highlights the need for genuine, personalised care for both patients and professionals.
43:39•22 Oct 2026
Re-Humanising Cancer Care: Aga Kehinde on Nurses, Burnout and Faith
Episode Overview
- Creating emotional supervision spaces helps nurses and doctors process trauma, burnout and difficult feelings rather than just clinical issues.
- Nurses often underestimate their own knowledge and need support to feel confident offering integrative and holistic information to patients.
- Rigid protocols and risk-averse systems can undermine genuine patient-centred care and block simple human responses like touch and comfort.
- Research highlighted patients’ strong need for personalised emotional support and suggested a stepped approach where support levels match individual needs.
- Conversations about faith and belief can give patients a sense of meaning, hope and connection to something bigger than themselves during cancer.
“"Despite all this, what kind of patient or person do I want to be? This isn’t changeable, but who do I want to be in all this?"”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation on the Yes To Life Show widens the lens to look at another kind of chronic stress: the emotional toll of cancer care on NHS staff, and what happens when humanity is squeezed out by rigid protocols. Cancer nurse specialist and coach Aga Kehinde joins host Robin Daly to talk about her work in oncology, where she’s pushing for care that’s truly patient-centred and integrative.
You’ll hear Aga describe monthly “restorative supervision” sessions she runs for nurses and doctors – spaces that focus less on case notes and more on feelings, burnout, resentment, and the very real impact of witnessing distress and death day after day. Aga explains how nurses are torn between rising patient expectations for holistic support and a system that keeps tightening rules and documentation.
Many staff underestimate their own knowledge and feel unsure whether they’re even allowed to be openly kind, spiritual, or emotionally present.
She contrasts tick-box protocols with the simple question she offers both patients and staff: “Who do I want to be in the midst of this chaos?” There’s a strong theme of “permission” running through the episode – permission for nurses to be human, to touch, to comfort, to acknowledge sadness, and to use tools like mindfulness and emotional freedom techniques for themselves as well as their patients.
Robin and Aga also touch on the role of faith in illness, with Aga sharing her personal journey back to Christian faith and how conversations about belief often bring patients meaning, hope, and a sense of something bigger than their diagnosis.
If you’re interested in the emotional side of health care, or you’re on a recovery path and wondering how staff support (or strain) shapes your experience, this candid chat might leave you asking: what kind of person do you want to be in your own time of pressure?
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