Contacts
Contact:
Sue Hutton
Service Manager
Organisation:
Camden PCT
Palliative Care 3rd Floor West Wing 250 Euston Road London NW1 2PG United Kingdom
Tel:
020 7380 6811
Email:
Case study:
11 May 2010
Palliative Care Team’s 24-hour on-call service in Camden and UCLH
Key points
- Camden and UCLH Palliative Care Team provides a 24-hour on-call service which offers advice and home visits 365 days a year
- The service has been running 20 years and is staffed by specialist nurses and doctors as well as consultants
- The service also provides phone support to carers of children and adolescents outside the catchment area.
Camden and UCLH (University College London Hospital) Palliative Care Team in London provides a 24-hour on-call service offering phone advice as well as visits to patients in their home 365 days a year.
The service, which is provided by an integrated community and hospital palliative care team and has been operating for the last 20 years, means everyone in the Camden and Islington area has full access to palliative care at all times and irrespective of diagnosis.
It is available to patients in the local area as well as those being cared for at University College Hospitals Foundation Trust.
It also provides telephone support for the carers of children and adolescents living outside these areas who do not have access to other palliative care out of hours support.
The service consists of a first on-call practitioner (either a clinical nurse specialist or specialist registrar) supported by a second on-call consultant (either a medical or nurse consultant in palliative care).
There have been some changes during its 20 years’ existence. For example, the consultants also provide out of hours cover to St John’s, a local hospice, (this is a reciprocal arrangement with the hospice consultant being an integral part of the palliative care team’s on call rota).
Also for the last seven years the nurse consultant has been part of the consultant rota, and takes out of hours responsibility for the hospice in the same way as the medical consultants.
All palliative care clinical nurse specialists and doctors are told at the recruitment stage they will be expected to be part of the on-call rota.
They are then supported to provide this service and only start when their competence is assured.
Part of the secret of the service’s success has been not differentiating between the type of professional who is available first on-call, which ensures a more sustainable rota.
Systems have been designed to allow seamless working with local out of hours primary care services.
Independent prescribing by nurses has also increased the service’s ability to respond rapidly to changing symptoms out of hours.
The on-call service standard is reviewed every two years and updated in line with modern practice.
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