Palliative care

About our service

When there is no cure for an illness, palliative care tries to make the end of a person’s life as comfortable as possible. This is done by attempting to relieve pain and other distressing symptoms while providing psychological, social and spiritual support. Carers and family are also offered emotional and spiritual support. This is called a `holistic` approach to care.

Some people with conditions such as cancer can live for many years but they sometimes need treatments such as radiotherapy or chemotherapy to help keep their cancer, or other condition under control. Palliative care can be offered following such treatments or, in the earlier stages of an illness, alongside other treatments. This can be particularly important for children and young people who may live with a life-limiting condition for a long time.

Specialist palliative care services

The Specialist Palliative Care Team in Stockport aims to provide specialist advice and support to achieve optimum quality of life for individuals and their families when facing a diagnosis of cancer or any other progressive life threatening illness. 

The Specialist Palliative Care Team will not take over a person’s care, but act as a specialist resource working alongside and in support of generic services within Stockport NHS Foundation Trust and the community, such as GPs and District Nurses.  

The team includes:

• Consultant in Palliative Medicine
• Associate Specialist in Palliative Medicine
• Macmillan Clinical Nurse Specialists 
• Palliative Care Pharmacist                                
• Palliative Care Social Worker                          
• Palliative Care Dietitian                                    
• Secretarial support

Palliative care respite

The Palliative Care Respite team provide care and support to people who have cancer and other life limiting illnesses.  They work closely with other services to provide the best possible care to patients and carers. 

The aim of the service is to enable people with cancer and other life limiting illnesses to be cared for at home, which could include their own house or a care home.  The team place particular importance on helping people to achieve their goal to die at home rather than in hospital.  There are Healthcare Assistants within the team who can provide 3-4 hours day respite support or overnight sits from 10pm – 7am. Healthcare Assistants provide hands-on care and they are experienced in caring for people with Palliative Care needs in a sensitive and supportive way.

Our expertise

You may need support from the palliative care team for various reasons: 

• Management of symptoms caused by your illness     
• To provide you and your family/carers with support and information that may help you  make decisions about the care and treatment you could be offered 
• Help you and your family adjust  to living with a serious illness     
                                               
• Advice on benefits and additional financial assistance
• Help in dealing with spiritual questions which may arise from your illness     
                                 
• Referral to other Palliative Care Services.

How to use the service

Not all people with progressive life threatening illness will need or desire intervention from the Specialist Palliative Care Team. Your needs may be being met by your GP, District Nurse or Hospital team.  We work in close partnership with the teams who refer to us.

We have an open referral system which means in addition to health and social care staff being able to refer, patients and carers can also self refer. However, the referral will only be accepted if we have the consent of the patient to the referral being made.