Denise Williams, Clinical Lead for Community and Wellbeing - Wigan & Leigh Hospice
Often people aren’t aware that our hospice services extend beyond the grounds of the hospice building, into our community. In fact, we support more people in our community than on our Inpatient Unit.
There are several services and professionals involved in providing palliative care in the community. We all work together to ensure that patients and those important to them have access to the right support by the right people at the right time.
‘Wigan Healthier Partnership Integrated Specialist Palliative Care Active Response’, also known as WHISPAR, was introduced to improve how we coordinate the provision of palliative care.
WHISPAR is a single point of access for all referrals to end of life care services across the borough.
Representatives from each service meet every day to review referrals and allocate end of life care services to support patients and those important to them, ensuring there is a prompt response to all referrals, prioritising those most in need.
At first, patients may feel able to manage with the support of family, friends, and paid carers. We want to ensure that they have access to additional support should their needs change.
As their illness progresses, patients may need more support from professionals such as GP’s, District Nurses, Domiciliary Providers, Care Homes, Allied Health Care professionals, Counselling and Complementary Therapy.
But if their needs become more complex, services such as Community Matrons, Hospice Nurse Specialists, Hospice in Your Home, Specialist Palliative Care Doctors, Hospice Inpatient Unit, and the Hospital Specialist Palliative Care Team may be needed.
Denise Williams, Clinical Lead for Community and Wellbeing at Wigan & Leigh Hospice says,
“The implementation of WHISPAR has been a huge success, bringing together palliative care service providers who work in partnership to meet the needs of patients and those important to them. Over the last 12 months we have seen an extra 418 referrals come through WHISPAR and have appropriately allocated services to meet people’s needs. It’s a huge team effort and we are presenting at the Hospice UK conference in November to share the learning from this initiative.
We continue to work on increasing awareness of WHISPAR with healthcare professionals and the public with the launch of training and a new patient information leaflet in the coming months.”
Any referrals to WHISPAR must come from a health and social care professional, we do not accept referrals from patients or their families. It is also important to note that all patients must consent to a referral. If you have a palliative care need that is not being met, please speak to your GP who can refer you through WHISPAR.
Click here to find out more information on our services.