Western Mail Column: Marie Curie Allied Health Team

Western Mail Professional Column, August 27, 2018

The Allied Health Services team at the Marie Curie Hospice: Cardiff and the Vale place their patients and families at the centre of everything they do, always promoting that patients live as fulfilling a life as possible whilst living with a terminal illness. 

The team consists of social workers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, spiritual care co-ordinator and a rehabilitation technician working at the hospice’s in-patient unit and also with the community palliative care team. 

The social workers support patients and families not only by helping identify support needs, but also by providing emotional support, helping with coming to terms with emotionally challenging situations.  The first element of identifying support needs cannot be underestimated, the value of this is in making the patient’s preferred place of care a reality, which places a huge demand on families.  By helping patients and families identify their needs and advocate for them through engaging supportive services, Marie Curie social workers help lessen the demand which in turn provides the opportunity for patients and families to have quality time.  

Emotional support also offered to relatives including adults, children and young people.  This support extends to family members in their bereavement.  Dealing with facing one’s own mortality or the death of a loved one can evoke a variety of emotions from distress, anger, relief and guilt.  The social workers will help people understand and process their emotions, which is particularly important with children and young people to help them process and understand the whole situation.  

The role of the Spiritual Care Co-ordinator is new and comes from reflecting on the spiritual needs of modern society.  The aim was to provide a spiritual care service to all whether they follow a religion or none.  We recognise that people can have spiritual needs but not follow an organised religion or may adopt values from a variety of religions.  The co-ordinator helps the multi-disciplinary team (MDT) to make sure we are respectful of those needs throughout the care we provide.  In addition, we recognise the importance of someone maintaining contact with their own religious community whilst an in-patient, therefore with the patient’s permission, the co-ordinator will contact community faith representatives so that spiritual support can reflect patient’s specific beliefs.  The co-ordinator is also able to support families when planning funerals; signposting to various religious communities. 

 

The physiotherapy team help patients regain or maintain their mobility and movement.  Patients may have spent a period of time in bed whilst acutely ill or maybe their symptoms are preventing them from mobilising and being functional. The physiotherapists will encourage them to maintain these physical skills, recognising how important mobility is to not only doing essential tasks like getting to the bathroom but also to taking a walk in the garden.  Physiotherapists are also able to help with difficult symptoms including breathlessness, teaching people different techniques to self-manage symptoms and enable them to do all that is important to them. 

Occupational therapists (OTs) promote functional independence whether that is difficulty getting in/out of bed to managing fatigue levels so quality time can be enjoyed with family and friends.  OTs can use adaptive equipment, educate on symptom management or recommend a different way of doing things to help a patient be independent.  There is much focus on supporting people to be in their preferred place of care, whether that be teaching family members moving and handling techniques to help care for their loved one safely to advising on how to manage anxiety and breathlessness so a patient can get to the bathroom etc and not let their symptoms get in the way.  Both the OTs and Physios are supported by a rehabilitation technician to enable patients to reach their potential. 

 

We all work closely together with the wider MDT to make sure the needs of our patients and families are at the heart of everything we do.  In addition to our profession specific roles, we also help to plan for the next phase of illness, identifying coping plans with the purpose of avoiding crisis and unnecessary admission to the hospice or hospital.

Working in palliative care is very satisfying and rewarding when we can support patients living with a terminal illness achieve all that is important to them.   

 

Becky Lewis, Allied Health Professionals Manager and Occupational Therapist at Marie Curie Cardiff and the Vale