Thames Hospice - Palliative Care Response Team

As lockdown eases and we adjust to a new normal, we wanted to let you know about the latest changes to our work at the hospice.

Palliative Care Response Team
We told you before about the increase in need from patients at home. There are many more patients and because they are staying away from GP’s and surgeries our nurses are seeing more patients in crisis because their illness is advanced. To respond to this greater level of need and the larger number of ‘emergency’ call outs we have now merged our community nurse team and our Rapid Response team so that our nurses can deal with ongoing case management and urgent interventions across the team and that patients are never left without the right care for that moment in time.

In patient unit
Our in-patient unit remains focused on having two zones that take care of patients at the end of their lives with and without coronavirus.

This week our unit is full again, with families now allowed longer visiting times we have seen confidence build and our patients are returning which is good as there are some where the hospice is the best place for them to get the care they need. We have now resumed our patient and family pastoral care support. Many families will feel nervous and scared knowing that we are also treating patients that have coronavirus but we ensure that everyone will wear PPE when they are visiting to minimise risk. We do need to get used to this new way of normal.

In the last few weeks we have be seeing quite a few Covid related sicknesses with our palliative care response team which is difficult. We are also working with local care homes and next week will delivering training remotely to colleagues in local care homes.