Specialist palliative care telephone support line
Who can access the Telephone Support Line?
The Specialist Palliative Care Telephone Support Line is an advice line available 24 hours, 7 days a week to provide advice to patients, families and health and social care professionals regarding unmet palliative care needs for patients at home or in a care setting that is their home.
The Telephone Support Line can be contacted for specialist palliative care advice whether it’s for a patient facing a new symptom, a carer worried about giving the correct dosage of pain relief or a doctor with a query, the Telephone Support Line is there to support everyone in our catchment area.
You can reach the Telephone Support Line on 07967 724731.
Key features:
• A dedicated telephone advice line for people living and working in Hastings and Rother
• One easy to remember number
• We understand this can be a difficult time, and it’s why we’re here for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Provides information, guidance, signposting and support to patients and their families and carers in the last years of their life
Get advice and support on:
• Managing symptoms such as pain, nausea, vomiting and restlessness
• Supporting the person who is ill
• Supporting distressed family members
• Maintaining your own wellbeing as a carer for someone with palliative care or end of life needs
• Making a referral to Hospice services such as Wellbeing, Hospice Outreach, Bereavement & Spiritual Support Service, Rehabilitation team and the In-Patient Unit
• If needed, we will speak with the teams from East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (ESHT) about visits for stat (one-off) injections from Just in Case Medication or syringe pump management. We will try to give you an expected response time when we say we will make a referral and we will ask the teams to update you directly regarding their visit.
Please be aware that:
• Calls may be taken by our advice and support staff, a Senior Registered Nurse or a Doctor
• We make a record of all calls including general or nursing enquiries
• Advice given will be based on the information provided by the caller
• When the query is about an existing patient we update their records accordingly
• We will only give prescribing advice directly to the prescriber
• Calls may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes
• Your query may be answered immediately or we may need further information in order to help you and we will ring you back
• There are times when the line may be busy, if you leave a message we will call you back.
*Please note that the 24/7 Advice and Support Line team are not able to directly provide counselling.
