Specialist Palliative Care Team wins Norfolk Care Award

Specialist Palliative Care Team wins Norfolk Care Award

Our partnership with St Elizabeth Hospice to provide free Specialist Palliative Care in Norfolk and Waveney has led to a win at the Norfolk Care Awards for 'Collaboration in Care'.

Since April 2019 more than 3,000 patients and their families have been supported by the service. Prior to this there was no specialist palliative inpatient care in the area and patients with conditions such as cancer, heart failure, pulmonary disease and neurological disorder had to travel to Norwich or Ipswich for palliative care support and treatment.

The partnership has resulted in St Elizabeth Hospice providing specialist consultant and medical support to six palliative care beds in Beccles Hospital, which is run and staffed by ECCH. It also has 11 SEH clinical nurse specialists visiting patients in their own homes as part of ECCH’s four Primary Care Home teams which support Primary Care Networks in Lowestoft, South Waveney, Gorleston and Great Yarmouth and the northern villages.

The service also offers medical consultant in reach support into the James Paget Hospital including an outpatient clinic, together with support to the hospital palliative care team.

Community Care Units are run at Martham Medical Centre, Sole Bay Health Centre and Beccles Hospital. These provide a relaxing and welcoming atmosphere for our multi-disciplinary team to offer patients and their families support, including medical and nursing support, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, support groups and rehabilitation programmes. It means patients’ wellbeing and social needs can be met, while also enabling all necessary healthcare appointments to be organised and completed in one location, on the same day. 

The service also offers a 24-hour advice line – OneCall - which can be utilised by patients and their families as well as health care professionals, and the hospice’s emotional, wellbeing and bereavement support service, LivingGrief.