SERVICES / PALLIATIVE CARE
Pain and symptom control at home or in our homes, for as long as it is needed — with the conversations most services leave to somebody else.
WHAT PALLIATIVE CARE IS
It is not giving up, and it does not begin in the last week. It is deciding that a good day matters more than one more intervention — and then working very hard to produce good days.
Palliative care runs alongside treatment, often for months or years. Patients referred early are usually more comfortable, spend fewer nights in hospital, and keep more of their own routine. It can start the week of a diagnosis.
Most of our palliative patients are cared for in their own bedroom, by their own family, with our nurse alongside.
WHAT WE MANAGE
Assessed daily on a scale the patient can actually use, and treated to a written plan rather than on request. Opioids are used correctly when they are needed — underdosing out of fear is the commonest failure we correct.
The symptoms families find most frightening. Managed with positioning, oxygen, fans, and medication ready at the bedside before it is needed, so nobody spends a night waiting for a pharmacy to open.
The unglamorous work that decides whether a day is bearable. Two-hourly repositioning, mouth care every shift, pressure-area checks, and constipation managed before it becomes an emergency.
Our clinical psychologist sees patients and families separately. Children are included when the family wants them included, in language chosen for their age.
THE CONVERSATIONS
Families tell us the hardest part was not the nursing. It was not knowing what was coming, and everybody protecting everybody else from saying so.
Our doctor will sit with you and answer the questions plainly: what the likely course is, what the last weeks tend to look like, which symptoms we can control and which we can only ease. We will tell you when a hospital admission would add days without adding comfort, and we will tell you when it would help.
We also ask what your father wants while he can still tell us. Where he wants to be. Who he wants there. Whether he wants to be resuscitated. Whether there is a debt, a will, a person he has not spoken to. Written down, shared with the family, and revisited — because it is easier to honour a wish that was recorded than to guess at one later.
Care does not stop at the deathOur nurse stays to help with the practical hours that follow — certification, washing and shrouding if the family wishes, and what to tell whom. Bereavement support is available to the family for six months afterwards, at no charge.
Most families choose home, and most stay home to the end. Cover ranges from a daily visit to a live-in nurse, and it can be stepped up in a day when things change. For families who cannot manage at home, we hold palliative beds at the Mirpur and Khulshi homes with open visiting, no fixed hours, and space for relatives to stay the night.
A referral from the treating doctor is helpful but not required. Our palliative doctor and nurse visit within 24 hours of your call, and there is no charge for that first visit or for the plan they write.
They did not tell us it would be fine. They told us what would happen, in order, and then it happened that way. That honesty is what we were able to hold on to.
PALLIATIVE CARE, ANSWERED
24/7 CARELINE
Tell us what your family needs. A care advisor will call you within hours.
