Our Clinical Nurse Specialists have specialist palliative care skills and are armed with knowledge to provide you with support and advice. Your GP, consultant or nurse specialist can refer you to a Trinity nurse, who will give support and guidance to your caring team to maximise your quality of life. Our nurses can also advise on anything from complex symptom management to spiritual and psychological care.

Helping you cope

Our nurses are here to:

• Help to manage symptoms, such as pain, nausea or breathlessness.

• Advise patients, family and carers, making it easier to make decisions about the future.

• Contact your GP, district nurses and social services to make sure you are receiving the best possible ‘joined up’ care.

• Provide access to some of Trinity’s other services, such as the Day Therapy Unit, In Patient Unit, Complementary Therapy and theLinden Centre.

You might meet one of our specialist nurses at the hospital, at your GP surgery or in your own home. Wherever they are, our nurses always act as a advocate for you to achieve the highest quality of care at the time when you need us most.

Hospice at Home

Hospice at Home has been launched as a partnership between Blackpool CCG, Fylde and Wyre CCG and Trinity Hospice. The service supports patients overnight in their own homes as they enter the final months of life.

The service is a response to the call for greater patient choice; for some people their last and greatest wish is to die at home in familiar surroundings.

The hope is that fewer unplanned hospital admissions will be needed if carers have the reassurance of Hospice at Home nurses just a phone call away. Many 999 calls are made at night as families worry about a loved one’s deterioration and don’t want to wait until the GP surgery opens to get advice or prescribed medication for pain and symptom control.

There are two Hospice at Home teams, each consisting of a registered nurse and a healthcare assistant. One team primarily covers the ‘north’ of the Fylde coast, the other the ‘south’. The service runs 9pm to 8am seven days a week. The length of each home visit will depend on the patient’s needs.

Hospice at Home works closely with GPs and district nurses and patients are referred to the team using specific criteria via Fylde Coast Medical Services, who co-ordinate out of hours care.

For more information about Hospice at Home – which is based at Trinity – contact Nicky Parkes 01253 358881.