Specialist Community Team
Our Community Clinical Nurse Specialists are trained to support patients in their own homes by offering advice on pain and symptom relief as well as offering emotional and spiritual support to both patients and their families. They work closely with, and are supported by, the multi-disciplinary team at St Peter & St James.
Although our Community Clinical Nurse Specialists work in the same way as Macmillan Nurses, they are not part of the Macmillan service. Our nurses are wholly funded by St Peter & St James mainly by charitable donations from the community that we serve.
All of our Hospice services are free of charge to patients and their loved ones. We receive just 15% of our funding from the Government and have to raise more than £1.3 million every year through fundraising. That's £3,600 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.
The service that we offer has been shaped by recent studies which show that a high level of patients would prefer to remain at home if the right services and level of care allowed them to do so.
- At any time our Community Clinical Nurse Specialists are caring for more than 120 patients
- In a year the Team make more than 5,000 calls and more than 2,000 visits
- We anticipate that the demand for this service will continue to increase
What does a Community Clinical Nurse Specialist do?
- Monitor any physical symptoms that patients may have and work in close contact with a patient's GP and Hospital Consultant to treat these symptoms
- Be available to discuss any worries or answer any questions that patients or their loved ones may have about their illness and treatment
- Ensure that patients are receiving all the care they need whilst at home. Community Clinical Nurse Specialists do not actually provide physical care but will liaise closely with a patients' District Nurse and Social Services to make sure that their needs are being met
- Help patients to arrange any benefits that they are entitled to
- Arrange visits to the Day Hospice or an admission to the Hospice in-patient unit, if appropriate
Referral to St Peter & St James as a Hospice patient
Hospice patients are eligible for all Hospice services including referral to the Specialist Community Team. To be referred patients must be suffering from a progressive, incurable illness such as cancer or Motor Neurone Disease and other non-cancer diagnoses if appropriate such as Multi-System Atrophy, HIV and AIDS, and far-advanced organ failures.
Hospice patients must also live within our catchment area.
Click here to see a map of our catchment area.
Referral procedure
All referrals need to be received from healthcare professionals such as a GP or Consultant.