News: Excellence in Person and Whānau Centred Care Award
News: Excellence in Person and Whānau Centred Care Award
Cranford Hospice, alongside the Hawke’s Bay Distict Health Board renal service, specialist palliative care team, Māori Health and pastoral care team and Primary Care General Practitioner representative were joint winners of the Excellence in Person and Whānau Centred Care Award at the ninth annual Hawke’s Bay Health Awards.
This was for the newly launched Renal Supportive Care Clinic.
“This winning entry has addressed the hard part of living – dying well. Researching how best to support patients on an end-of-life pathway was key to this initiative, which followed international best practice to developing Support Care Clinics as patients faced tough decisions.
Before establishing their own ideas, the team asked their patients what they wanted and how they could best support them to die well. They also researched what other centres do and visited a similar clinic in Christchurch to gain insight.
The resulting outcome was a care plan that was not limited to renal and palliative care clinicians but others important to providing support in this phase of someone’s health journey.
The team invited palliative care specialists, Cranford Hospice Trust, pastoral care, a social worker and GP representative, a Psychologist and Kaitakawaenga from the Māori Health Team to work on developing an end of life pathway for patients. This has now seen the creation of structured appointments that were as long as the patient and their family needed to explore their concerns. Offering not only clinical support, but spiritual and cultural support as well. This team successfully integrated services throughout the health system and is now looking to translate their learnings to other secondary services and to national symposiums.
Most importantly their patients are thankful for this approach. To quote two of those patients:
‘I feel stronger now to tell people what it is I want, doctors and my whānau.’
‘My heart feels lighter’ – expressed by a patient at the end of the first visit in the clinic. This patient described how he had not talked about his dying before and understood he was unlikely to live another year.”