Health and Social Care Professional Information
Health and Social Care Professional Information
At Hospice in the Weald we value the positive working relationships we have with many health and social care colleagues locally. We believe that in order to provide a gold standard level of palliative and end of life care collaboration needs to include patients, families and both formal and informal care providers.
Who can be referred?
Anyone who has been given a terminal diagnosis can be referred to Hospice in the Weald for help. This includes any diagnosis, not just cancer. More than 50% of the patients known to us have diagnoses other than cancer, including heart failure, dementia, COPD and frail old age. If you feel the patient has complex symptom control needs or is likely to be in the last year of their life, then feel free to refer them to us.
You should first discuss making this referral with the person whom you are referring to make them aware.
Making a Referral
It is easy to refer a patient to our services – over the phone this shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, but you are welcome to use any means you like.
- you can call us on 01892 820515
- you can refer by completing our referral form and emailing it to hitw.hospice@nhs.net
- you can use our Access Care button on the top of this screen
If you are uncertain if the patient is within our catchment area or you want to talk about a patient who is not within the community we serve, please telephone 01892 820515 for advice.
Seeking clinical advice
We offer a 24/7 service, offering advice to our patients and their families over the telephone, round the clock, 365 days a year. Using our computerised care records, we are often able to give more details about a patient’s condition or their advance care plans to other health and social care professionals especially out of hours – this advice can be crucial in keeping patients in their preferred place of care. Please phone us on 01892 820515 if you feel you need more information about a patient.
Our team of specialist nurses, paramedics and doctors are available for clinical advice, for example, increasing painkillers or stopping unnecessary medications and can be contacted on 01892 820515 or via hitw.hospice@nhs.net. Please feel free to contact an individual member of the senior team using the details contained here, if you wish to access a specific individual.
Our consultants are members of the Kinesis clinical advice system and will happily offer advice through this system too. This may be more suitable for patients not otherwise known to Hospice in the Weald.
If you would like to look at some of our policies that might be relevant to you, please click here. If you would like to look at any of our clinical guidelines to help with your management of a patient, please contact a member of the Hospice workforce who will be happy to share these with you or to offer clinical advice over the ‘phone.