Information about our Supportive and Palliative Care Service

What is supportive and palliative care?

The aim of supportive and palliative care is to help you to have a good quality of life. It is most commonly offered to patients and their families when they are facing challenges associated with life-limiting illness, but can also be offered alongside curative treatment of serious conditions. This includes cancer of all types, and other progressive diseases such as heart failure, kidney failure, COPD, pulmonary fibrosis, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis, multi-systems atrophy, and dementia.

Because life-limiting illnesses can affect all aspects of life (physical, spiritual, social, psychological / emotional, and work), supportive and palliative care embraces all of these areas.

We also recognise that what is happening to you also affects those you love and care for. We try to offer support for them as well.

Why have I been referred?

Often we are asked to see patients for advice on managing complex symptoms, like pain and nausea (feeling sick), linked with their medical condition. However, it may be that the doctors looking after you in hospital have recently given you some bad news about your medical condition, and feel that you may like to talk this through with someone not directly involved with the medical team. It may be that you need to consider the risks and benefits of further treatment in terms of your ongoing quality of life. We can talk these through with you and your family.

Who are the supportive and palliative care team?

Our team is made up of:

• Consultants in Palliative Medicine

  Some work between the hospitals and local hospice.

• Consultant Nurse Supportive and Palliative Care

  Responsible for Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (QEQM) Hospital, Kent and Canterbury Hospital (K&C), and William Harvey Hospital (WHH).

• Lead Nurse Supportive and Palliative Care

  Alongside the Consultant Nurse, responsible for QEQM, K&C, and WHH.

• Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) Supportive and Palliative Care

  Cover all three hospital sites.

In addition

We work closely with the medical and nursing teams providing your care in hospital. We also work hand-in-hand with many other professionals involved with your care now and in the future, including:

• specialists in cancer and other diseases

• your GP (or family doctor)

• counsellors

• hospital chaplains

• district nurses / community matrons; and

• local hospice teams.

How can we help you?

We can provide help in a number of ways.

• Pain and symptom control.

• Support you through serious illness.

• Help plan your discharge from hospital, with the aim of achieving your preferred place of care.

• Telling you about other services that might be helpful (such as additional care at home, and the role of the hospice and the support they can provide).

• Help with advice on financial issues.

• Help you to plan your future care, so that where possible your wishes are respected and met.

• As the end of your life approaches, we can help you to make the most of the time you have left, in the place you want to be.

• Help with having difficult conversations with loved ones and those you care for.

If there is something important to you not covered in the list above, please talk to us about it. We will try to help if we can.

Your supportive and palliative care contact:

Name:

Role:

Contact number:

Supportive and Palliative Care contact details

• Kent and Canterbury Hospital and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (QEQM) Hospital
  Telephone: 01227 766877 and ask to speak to a member of the Supportive and Palliative Care Team.

• William Harvey Hospital
  Telephone: 01233 633331 and ask to speak to a member of the Supportive and Palliative Care Team.