Need support in caring for a patient with a life limiting illness, their carer or family? Support and advice for palliative and end of life care is available to all health and social care staff via the specialist palliative care teams in Leeds:
- Support from a hospice, community teams & out-patients
St Gemma’s Hospice and Wheatfields Hospice can support you if you are caring for people in the community.
The Specialist Palliative Care Team based at St James’s University Hospital can support you to care for people in the teaching hospitals in Leeds.
The Surprise Question Do you care for people requiring end of life care? Often people answer ‘no’, until they are asked: ‘Would I be surprised of this person died within the next 6 to 12 months?’ Then often the answer is changed to ‘yes’.
Palliative care should be offered to people with a progressive life-limiting illness. It provides active holistic care, where health and social care staff work together to manage someone’s pain and symptoms while also providing physical, emotional, social and spiritual support. Their goal is to give people and their families / carers the best possible quality of life. Palliative care can be given alongside other treatments for weeks, months or years.
End of life care is another term that is also often used. End of life care is more than the last few days of life; it begins 6 to 12 months before someone dies and ends 6 to 12 months after death. It is the period of time where people may wish to make plans and choices about how they would prefer their death to occur.