FAQs
Q: What is hospice or palliative care?
A: By controlling pain and other symptoms, hospice care, also known as palliative care, enables patients to achieve the best possible quality of life.
Hospice care:
- provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms
- affirms life and regards dying as a normal process
- intends neither to hasten or postpone death
- integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care
- offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death
- offers a support system to help the family cope during the patient's illness and in their own bereavement
- uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated;
- will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of an illness
- is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications
Source: (World Health Organisation, 2002)
Q: What services do you offer?
A: Please click here to see the full range of services that we offer.
Q: What is the difference between the Hospice and the Continuing Care Centre?
A:- Care: Continuing Care patients tend to require high dependency care for a longer period of time than Hospice patients. Some Continuing Care patients may spend several years at St Peter & St James.
- Funding: All Hospice services (in-patient unit, Specialist Community Team, Day Hospice and Support Services) are free of charge to Hospice patients and their loved ones. These services are largely paid for through fundraising activity. Patients in the Continuing Care Centre may be eligible for all or part of their funding from Social Services or the Government depending on their individual circumstances, or may fund their own care.
Q: How is St Peter & St James funded?
A: All of our Hospice services are free of charge to patients and their loved ones. We receive less than 15% of our funding from the Government and have to raise more than £1.4 million every year through fundraising. That's £4,000 every single day.
To find out more about fundraising at St Peter & St James and how you might be able to help us please click here.
Q: Does everybody who goes into St Peter & St James die there?
A: No. Some patients come in for a short period of respite care, others for their medication to be adjusted so that they are able to return home and some for weekly visits to the Day Hospice. Nearly half of all people admitted to a hospice return home again and the average length of stay is just 13 days.
(Source: Hospice Information, 2007)
Q: What is your catchment area?
A: Our Hospice patients come from across East and West Sussex from Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath, Lewes, Uckfield and the surrounding villages. Our catchment area has a population of approximately 200,000 people. If every person in our catchment area gave just £6 a year this would cover our running costs. Please click here to see a map of our catchment area.
Continuing Care referrals come from across the UK.
Q: How can somebody be referred to St Peter & St James?
A: Referrals are usually made by health professionals such as GPs, District Nurses, or Consultants.