Yangden is the Charge Nurse for the Palliative Care Service at Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital (JDWNRH) in Thimphu, Bhutan. With 27 years of experience, she has dedicated her career to two ends of the healthcare spectrum, by establishing the birthing center and the palliative care unit at the National Referral Hospital. The palliative care unit was established in 2018 after Yangden was entrusted with the responsibility to establish and lead the country’s first Palliative Care Service.

Besides her primary responsibility to provide palliative care, she took the initiative to develop a National Palliative Care Training Manual for Bhutanese Health Care Professionals with guidance from WHO SEARO and technical expertise from WHO Collaborating Center at Calicut, India. This was one of the initial strategies for building the national capacity for palliative care and she has employed this manual in training health workers from ten districts out of twenty in Bhutan under the directives of the Ministry of Health.

She has also initiated an online clinical forum in collaboration with Health Volunteer Oversea (HVO) for the nurses in the Palliative Care Unit to discuss and manage difficult cases and her contributions extend to collaborating with the Ministry of Health in developing the National Guideline for Palliative Care.

Currently, she is involved in the upcoming project for constructing the first ever hospice in Bhutan.