The Palliative and End of Life Care Service aims to extend the boundaries of palliative care provision for all patients regardless of diagnosis.

We believe that every patient with end-stage disease should have equity of access to the highest standard of physical, social, spiritual, and psychological care. This is to ensure quality of life is maximised to enable patients to live well until they die, aiming to keep patients in their preferred place of care and strives to achieve the highest quality outcomes for patients and their families.

The service covers the whole of Staffordshire and Shropshire.

Caring for people at the end of their lives may be complex and often involves input from many different health and social care professionals working within the NHS, voluntary, and independent sectors.

The palliative and end of life care facilitator role plays a key part in enabling and empowering health and social care professionals to deliver best practice end of life care, in their organisations.

What the Service provides:

  • Streamlined and accessible end of life services
  • Signposting and coordination of supportive care i.e. Hospice and Marie Curie referrals
  • Coordination of care packages at home and nursing home placements
  • Coordination of applications for Fast Track funding
  • A central point of contact for Community Services, Adult Social Care, patients, families, and carers
  • Facilitation in the provision of equipment to support patients and carers in their home environment
  • Timely provision of services to reduce inappropriate admissions to and facilitate discharge from hospitals
  • Expert support and guidance to patients, families and community services to ensure safe and effective care

 

Community District Nursing Teams provide:

  • Support patients and families within their preferred place of care or death
  • Provide senior leadership and facilitation on the implementation of palliative care initiatives
  • Plan, organise, manage, and deliver aspects of end of life care including Gold Standard Framework (GSF) and Advanced Care Planning (ACP)
  • Ensure national palliative care and end of life initiatives are implemented
  • Act as a resource working and supporting clinicians in practice

 

We work closely with the local Hospices in supporting our patients in their end of life care. You can find links to the Hospices below which provides a greater insight into their specific services:

Palliative care prescribing is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification, impeccable assessment, and treatment of pain and other problems (such as physical, psychosocial, and spiritual). Careful assessment of symptoms and needs of the patient should be undertaken.

Patients may experience an increase in symptoms at end of life for example pain or anxiety. In order to safely and effectively manage any distressing symptoms medication for the most common symptoms may be prescribed in advance. These medications are kept in the home environment to ensure that any distressing symptoms can be treated quickly.

Your District Nursing team (or prescriber) will explain this medication and advise how to contact the nursing team for administration of this medication.

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Palliative Care & End of Life Services Contact Details

Hours of service: 09:00 to 20:00, 7 days a week.