Palliative Care Service
Information for patients, families and carers
What is palliative care?
- Palliative care helps people with life-threatening illnesses feel more comfortable and manage their symptoms.
- It offers support and care to patients and their families when an illness is no longer curable.
- We recognise that emotional, spiritual, family and money worries might just be as important to you as physical problems.
- Palliative care aims to:
- Improve your quality of life
- Help treat pain and other symptoms
- Help you live your life as normally as possible
Who provides palliative care?
Palliative care is delivered by nurses, doctors, your GP and other healthcare professionals.
If someone has difficult or upsetting problems, a team of palliative care specialists can provide extra support.
At Whittington Hospital, you may be seen by:
- Nurse Consultant: Robert Hammond
- Lead Clinical Nurse Specialist: Jennifer Spears
- Clinical Nurse Specialists: Samantha Hunt or Robbie Murphy
- Medical Consultants: Dr Anna Gorringe, Professor Faye Gishen or Dr Antke Hagena
How can the palliative care specialists help me?
- We help and give advice on managing physical symptoms like pain, feeling sick, or trouble breathing.
- We offer emotional support and advice to you, your family, and carers.
- We address spiritual, social and practical needs.
- We will meet you to talk about your needs after your hospital team refers you to us, but you will still be under their care.
- We work closely with your hospital and community healthcare team and can also communicate with local hospices.
What is Advance Care Planning and a Universal Care Plan (UCP)?
- Palliative care staff can help you plan for your future care and write down your wishes. This is called an Advance Care Plan.
- It helps to share these plans with everyone involved in your care.
- This includes people who may be contacted if problems happen unexpectedly.
- The Universal Care Plan is a digital care plan. It records information about your illness, wishes, and preferences.
- It can include what you want to happen if you become more unwell.
- It can also include your preferences for where you would like to be cared for.
- Your care plan will be entered onto an electronic record.
- This is shared with your GP, Community Nurses, hospital teams, out-of-hours Doctors, Specialist Nurses, London Ambulance Service and NHS 111.
- Details on universal care plans can be found on their website: https://ucp.onelondon.online/
Data protection
- Everyone working for the NHS has a legal duty to maintain patient confidentiality.
- As a healthcare provider we need to collect information about you.
- We will store this securely and ask for your permission to share information outside of the organisation.
Useful contacts
Hospital Chaplaincy:
Tel: 020 7527 2000
You can also call our switchboard on 020 7272 3070 and ask to speak to our on-call chaplain.
Haringey Adult social services:
Tel: 020 8489 1400
Islington and South Camden community palliative care team:
Tel: 020 3317 5777
North London Hospice, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey community palliative care teams:
Tel: 0800 368 7848
North Camden Royal Free palliative care team:
Tel: 020 7830 2905
St Johns Hospice:
Tel: 020 7806 4040
St Joseph's Hospice:
Tel: 0300 3030 400
Whittington Health District Nurse messaging service (Islington & Haringey):
Tel: 020 7288 3555
North Central London Palliative Advice team (NCLPAT) out of hours Camden, Islington, Barnet, Enfield & Haringey:
Tel: 020 8152 3252 (8pm-8am Mon-Sun)
Camden, City, Islington & Westminster bereavement services:
Tel: 020 7284 0090
Islington & Hackney St Joseph's Hospice bereavement service:
Tel: 0300 3030 400
Contact our service
The service operates Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.
Tel: 020 7288 3682 or via switchboard 020 7272 3070 and ask for bleep 2824.