Working collaboratively with the care sector to offer the best care for our community…
Weston Hospicecare strives to work with it’s peers within the care industry in order to provide seamless and holistic palliative care to those with a life-limiting condition.
Here’s a snippet of our advice for working with us…
Making a referral…
Referrals are welcomed from consultants, GPs, clinical nurse specialists, district nurses and community matrons. If the GP is not the referrer, please advise the patient’s GP of your referral.
Weston Hospicecare cares for patients who are described in the following criteria;
1. They have a life-limiting disease with complex associated problems that may be physical, psychological, social,
emotional or spiritual in their origins.
2. Due to the level of complexity and/or intensity of their illness, their needs cannot solely be met by other services/care providers at this time.
3. They live within and/or are registered with a GP within our coverage area.
4. Both the GP and patient/advocate agree to the referral.
Depending on the reason for referral, an appropriate member of our team will contact the patient and arrange an initial appointment which can take place on-site at Jackson-Barstow House or home.
If the referral is urgent, a member of the team will make telephone contact within two working days. We are only able to take admissions for our inpatient unit from Monday-Friday until 3pm.
For immediate advice and guidance, healthcare professionals may phone us on 01934 423900. The referral guidelines above will help you decide if hospice services are appropriate for your patient and, if so, which services would be most useful.
If you have a patient who you think would benefit from our services, please do refer them to us. Simply fill in the form below to request a referral form or advice on how to access support.
Education and training
As part of our mission, purpose and values, we are dedicated to helping improve the care that people affected by life-limiting illnesses get in our community.
One way we do this is to provide a variety of training sessions. Our sessions are varied, both in topic and audience. If you’re interested in attending any of the below training sessions, please do get in touch.
If you don’t see a training session that meets your needs, you can also let us know, and we will evaluate whether or not the topic is one we could cover in future training sessions.
Training options include:
• Complementary Therapies and Palliative Care training
• Support for Family Members and Carers
Advance Care Planning…
We have developed a guide for planning for the last days of life in response to requests from patients and their families to have a cohesive guide covering choices for end of life care.
We find that there is no ideal point in a person’s illness to raise this, and this is very much dependent on the individual patient.
Raising the subject of advance care planning does involve considerable skill on behalf of the healthcare professional and is ideally done where a relationship of trust has been developed with the patient.
Often the process is done in several stages, and leaving a booklet in the house for the patient and family to look at in their own time may be appropriate.
Patients and their families should not be pressurised into doing advance care planning, but equally, we believe that patients should be allowed to plan for their future, thus retaining some degree of control over their lives.
We have also developed a document to facilitate decision-making for the care of patients lacking capacity.
The document aims to bring together relevant carers, family and healthcare professionals to share the information which can help with making a ‘best interests’ decision.
This can be extremely useful if a crisis arises to help direct the most appropriate management. If you’re interested in having a copy of this guide please get in touch by clicking here.
Click here for Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment document.
Click here for Somerset Treatment Escalation Plan & Resuscitation Decision document.