Service for terminally ill launched in Oxfordshire

A new service for supporting terminally ill patients and their cares has been launched in Oxfordshire.

The Rapid Intervention Service for End-of-life care (RISE) is a new service that supports the care of patients with a terminal illness during times of crisis.

It is one of only a handful of similar schemes across the NHS, and follows a series of pilot projects carried out last year by NHS Oxfordshire.

Health chiefs say a team of nurses and care staff with experience of palliative care, operating between 8am and 10pm seven days a week, will aim to make contact with a patient suffering a health crisis within 20 minutes.

Patients requiring overnight care will be linked to the Marie Curie Night Service or Out of Hours services. While RISE nurses will make sure other care services get involved if ongoing care is required.

Val Stangoe, NHS Oxfordshire’s End-of-Life and Non- Elective Care Service Development Manager, said: “RISE will really make a difference for patients and carers.  It will increase the support available to patients and their families and carers at times of crisis.

“It will also increase satisfaction with care by enabling care closer to home, offering an alternative to the trauma of emergency admission, identifying the needs of patients and ensuring they are referred to the most appropriate service and increasing access to qualified health professionals.”

NHS Oxfordshire has also set up a £10,000 educational fund for staff to get extra experience in end-of-life care.  The fund will be accessible to anyone working with health or social care groups in the county.

The RISE team will be run by the Allied Healthcare Group on behalf of NHS Oxfordshire.

“We’ve talked to patients and the public about what sort of help they need at the end of life and one of the main things they told us was that they wanted to die at home and not in a hospital,” said Val Stangoe.

“This service will provide support for patients and carers in the difficult last stages of life to enable them, wherever possible and if it is their wish, to be cared for in their own homes.”

RISE is available to all adults in Oxfordshire with any advanced, progressive, incurable illness such as advanced cancer, heart failure, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, stroke, chronic neurological conditions, end stage organ failure, and dementia, and an additional condition such as mental illness or learning disability.