Community Specialist Palliative Care Team
The Specialist Palliative Care team are integrated and co-located with the Care Community Teams across West Cheshire. The team work in close partnership with the Hospice, Palliative Medicine Consultants, Hospice services, GPs, Countess of Chester Hospital and other health and social care professionals to provide the highest quality palliative care to adult patients and those closest to them in the community setting.
Specialist Palliative Care
Specialist Palliative Care is the active care of patients with advanced, progressive life limiting illness. This includes the management of complex symptoms and the provision of psychological, social and spiritual support in line with best practice.
Specialist palliative care services manage complex palliative care problems that cannot be dealt with by generalist services alone. Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems physical, psychological and spiritual (WHO 2013).
The Community Specialist Palliative Care team provide support for anyone aged 18 and over who is registered with a West Cheshire GP and has a palliative diagnosis with complex physical, psychological or social needs.
Referrals are accepted from GP’s, acute hospital inpatients and outpatients’ health professionals, community health service professionals, care homes and hospices.
Referral criteria: the patient must have complex palliative care needs.
The referral is sent to a single point of referral via email. All referrals are reviewed daily Monday to Friday and are triaged to see which of the specialist services are most appropriate to support the person. The referrer is informed of the outcome via email.
The patient is contacted as determined by the individual team’s response times. This may be within 3 working days, a working week or two working weeks. Hospice inpatient admissions, once agreed, can happen as soon as a bed becomes available.
Email address for new referrals - coch.
Referrals are via professionals only.
New referrals are not routinely accepted from patients or families directly – they are advised to contact their GP or another healthcare professional involved.
If you are currently receiving support from the Specialist Palliative Care Nurses you will have been given an information leaflet with a contact number. Contact numbers can also be found here.
If you are currently receiving support from the Specialist Palliative Care Therapists (Occupational Therapist/ Physiotherapist/ Therapy Assistant), please call 01244 397356 and leave a message.
