Frequently asked questions:

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Why is St Catherine's changing its community service?
Were there any other reasons for changing service?
Does this mean you will be taking over from the district nursing teams?
When will the new community service be up and running?

Why is St Catherine's changing its community service?
For some years we have noticed increasing number of referrals.  Partly this is due to cancer becoming a more chronic disease but also that we now accept referrals for patients with non-malignant conditions.  Our new ways of providing care to our patients is in response to these changing needs.

Rather than just providing an advisory and support service for people in their own homes we will be able to provide a hand-on, practical service to them as well.

Were there any other reasons for changing service?
Currently our out of hours (outside Monday-Friday daytime) support for community patients is a telephone support service, utilised by patients, carers and healthcare professionals.  We realise that sometimes this is just not enough.  

The new service will add practical hands-on care to our range of services.  We hope that this will go a long way to ensuring patients' wishes to be cared for at home will not be compromised, in line with the Department of Health's End of Life Care Strategy.   

Does this mean you will be taking over from the district nursing teams?
No.   Our intention is to work in partnership with our community colleagues to ensure patient care needs are met in the home setting - if this is the patient's wish.  

We are in discussions with the local PCTs and with the Marie Curie nursing service to ensure we develop our new model of care in conjunction with existing services.

When will the new community service be up and running?
We are starting to make the necessary changes to our community team and we plan to have the new service in place by January 2009.