Community Specialist Palliative Care Service
Our aim is to help patients live life to the full, to treat people as individuals and respect their personal beliefs, lifestyle and culture.We want patients and carers to achieve the best quality of life possible for as long as possible.
Our specialist service includes:
- Advice on symptoms such as pain and treatment of other symptoms
- Help with any anxieties or concerns that patients, carers and families (including children) may have
- Help to put plans in place for care or treatment that might be needed in the future
- Information about additional help that may be available e.g. care at home, housing and financial matters
- Bereavement care and support
“Knowing that my community nurse is coming to visit me gives me the feeling that I have something to hold on to and that someone really cares.”
How the community teams work
At our first assessment we will assess the patient’s needs and get to know their family and carers. This may be in clinic or in your own home. We will discuss a plan together about how we feel we can help. We maintain contact by visit and/or phone until such a time when the plan is reviewed. For clinical advice, we can be contacted 24 hours a day.
Each patient is supported by a team of clinical staff as part of the multidisciplinary team approach. There is also an out of hours telephone service for advice at any time.
If a patient’s illness stabilises and our specialist advice is no longer needed, the patient will be discharged. We resume contact if the situation changes and the patient is referred back to the service, perhaps months or even years later.
Please note that we share relevant medical information with other healthcare professionals.
“Thank you to the whole palliative care team for the wonderful way you looked after my wife while she was at home. You were extremely kind and efficient and enabled us both to cope in a way we could never have imagined possible.”
Palliative Care Support Service (PCSS) – providing carers and registered nurses to people at home
Prior to all home care shifts being booked we will ask screening questions to assess the current situation. Our PCSS service is limited and, at times, allocations will need to prioritised based on care needs.
Haringey integrated palliative care service
North London Hospice is part of an innovatively integrated community service provided jointly with: North Middlesex Hospital, St Joseph’s Hospice, Marie Curie Hospice Hampstead and Whittington Health. Professionals work closely together to ensure that patient care is consistent, be it in hospital, at home, in a nursing home or hospice, and that information about what is important to each patient is shared between those different settings.
