Referral

 

We are often asked the question –

How are people referred to the Hospice?

People can be referred through a number of routes, Consultant, GP, District Nurse, Social Worker, hospital staff or even refer themselves. At the point of referral, the palliative care problems may not be obviously complex and often patients themselves say that they didn’t think they were ‘ill enough’ to be referred. More often than not however, complex problems can emerge over time and so a timely referral would help everyone to plan for the future.

What can people expect once they have been referred?

We offer an initial assessment of their palliative care needs and this would take place on an outpatient basis at either the Tendring or Colchester day centres. Our standard is to make telephone contact with the person within 2 working days of receipt of the referral and face-to-face contact within 10 working days.

We usually discover when we contact the patient that they were expecting a ‘Macmillan’ nurse to visit them at home and may be shocked to hear from the Hospice, not realising that all referrals to the ‘Macmillan’ service will go through the Hospice process. These nurses are, in fact, St Helena Hospice community nurse specialists and we take time to explain that these nurses are just one part of the service that we offer. We also explain that attending an outpatient assessment with their family members in a relaxed space with plenty of time for a shared assessment, can often be just as productive as a home visit.

It quickly becomes apparent on the phone, however, if an outpatient assessment is out of the question and a community nurse specialist would then be asked to make a home assessment.

The outcome of the assessment is decided mutually between the patient, family and professionals and may involve referral on to any part of our service such as day service, medical assessment, community nurse specialist, inpatient admission, complementary therapies, psychological therapies for patients and carers, fatigue management, breathlessness clinic, art or music therapy.

Whatever the outcome, the GP and referrer are informed in writing with the patient’s consent.

Therefore the question to ask is;

“Would my family and I benefit from an assessment by the Hospice team?”