Palliative medicine services

Our hospital-based specialist palliative care teams provide support for individuals, their loved ones and carers who are facing issues associated with an incurable advanced/progressive or sudden illness and are in the last year, weeks or days of life.

You will be referred to our service by the treating medical team during your admission if:

• your symptoms are new, unresolved, or getting worse
• your symptoms need reviewing
• you need emotional, psychological, or spiritual support (or signposting to other services for extra support). 

We aim to prevent or relieve complex symptoms of a physical nature, for example vomiting and pain.

Assessment and planning

Once you have been referred to the service, one of our team will make an initial assessment. This is to identify what may be troubling you and create a treatment plan to help manage symptoms. This will hopefully allow you to live comfortably and distress-free until approaching your terminal phase. 

We may see you in varying scenarios and locations within the hospital environment. 

After your initial assessment, one of our clinical nurse specialists (CNS) will aim to visit you daily to review your needs through holistic assessments.

Whether you are in hospital or in the community, some of your symptoms may change during this phase — this may be a rapid situation or sometimes could be short weeks to days — this is important to review regularly as it can be difficult to determine when an individual is dying. 

Supporting your needs

We will support you as best we can while you are an inpatient with decisions, choices, planning preferences and the wishes you have and of those who are important to you.

As a team, we will support you and your loved ones in the form of specialist advice and planning.

Continuing care with specialist staff training

We provide specialist advice for healthcare staff who are looking after you, because much of your care will be provided by professionals who are not specialist in palliative care. 

This advice is supported by a palliative medicine specialist consultant (available at each site) to give guidance on your management and treatment.

Not all of your care will take place in the hospital environment. 

You may experience some admissions into hospital when you have a palliative diagnosis, and sometimes this may be at different hospital sites, but your care will be coordinated with community healthcare providers when necessary.

Our hospital palliative care teams have good rapport and communication with our community colleagues and access to the community care records. This could be district nurses, community palliative care nurses, GPs, therapists and hospice staff, as they may be involved in your care and support package when you are not in hospital. 

We offer a seven-day service at all three main hospital sites of our Trust. 

Basildon Hospital

We are open Monday to Sunday between the hours of 8am and 5.30pm.

Call the clinical nurse specialist team on 0300 443 0183 or email mse.palliativecarebtuh@nhs.net. 

Broomfield Hospital

We are open Monday to Sunday between the hours of 9am and 5pm.

Call the clinical nurse specialist team on 01245 362000 using extension 4503 or email mse.palliativecare.meht@nhs.net. 

Southend Hospital

We are open Monday to Sunday between the hours of 9am and 5pm.

Call the clinical nurse specialist team on 01702 435555 using extension 5190 or email mse.PalliativeCareTeam.SOUTHEND@nhs.net.