26 years of caring for our local community 1987-2013
As you can imagine, many changes have occured over the last 26 years...
St Wilfrid’s Hospice opened its doors to its first patient on 5th January 1987 and at that time had just 9 beds. Three community nurses joined the team in 1990, and the number of beds was increased to fifteen. Since that time we have developed our community team and now have 8 clinical nurse specialists working in the local community.
Throughout the years there have been several building projects which have included:
- Additional beds
- Day Hospice
- Education Centre
- Chapel
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Each extension to the building has enabled us to increase the services available to patients and their families, and we now are able to provide comprehensive care offering the full range of specialist palliative care.
Over the years services have developed gradually as funding has become available. We have also needed to be aware that palliative care needs to be provided wherever the patients are, and to work with local colleagues. One of our first developments was to work with St Richard’s Hospital to provide specialist palliative care nurses in the hospital – and there is now a team of two nurses and other support staff.
In 1992 we added a social worker to our team. This enabled us to provide more support to our patients and their families, and also to offer bereavement care. The Psychosocial Team now consists of a team leader and 2 team members as well as the support staff and volunteers.
Education is one of our important activities and a tutor was added to the staff in 1993. In 2000 the education department was able to occupy a purpose built space and the number of courses run has been able to increase.
Integration with St Richard’s Hospital is very
important and since 2000 our consultants have run clinics alongside the cancer physicians and meet with other doctors to discuss patient care.
St Wilfrid’s opened with two part time doctors. In 1994 our team expanded to three and we now have six physicians, including two consultants and four doctors, one of which is a training grade.
Our Day Hospice is situated on the ground floor of the education building. This opened in 2000 and we have 15 spaces available two days a week. More recently in June 2011 the "Orchard Cafe" opened its doors to patients and their family and friends to offer an informal drop-in centre available one day a week.
Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy are important to enable our patients to be as active as possible and over the years we have been able to increase the services available. We have also been able to improve the range of complementary services we can offer to people.
