By putting more palliative services under one roof North Shore Hospice and its partners are hoping to help hospice patients make every day count.
That’s partly the message that the North Shore Hospice and Palliative Project – an association between the North Shore Hospice Society, Lions Gate Hospital Foundation, and Vancouver Coastal Health – are getting across as construction gets underway to expand the current hospice at 319 East 14th St. in North Vancouver.
A LGH Foundation donation drive raised $2.3 million for the expansion project.
A groundbreaking ceremony last month marked the start of construction on the project, which is billed as including the first ever palliative care outpatient clinic on the North Shore and possibly all of B.C.
“It’s going to create a palliative care hub and that means the hospice will serve more patients and more families and enable our care team to connect with these people earlier in their end-of-life journeys,” explained LGH Foundation vice-president Louise Campbell.
She noted that the expansion will improve North Shore Hospice in two main ways: The first will be by bringing the hospice’s Every Day Counts program – an initiative that addresses all aspects of a patient’s quality of life that are not medical, such as emotional well-being and mental health – under one central roof.
Prior to the expansion, the hospice has offered Every Day Counts sessions and classes, like yoga for palliative patients and musical therapy, in a variety of locations, such as John Braithwaite Community Centre or the gym at Lions Gate Hospital.
“It’s much easier for these people to get to one place. It pulls the whole program together and makes it that much stronger,” Campbell said about the new Every Day Counts hub that will bring the whole program in-house.
The second aspect of the expansion will be the creation of a new palliative outpatient clinic that will reside directly within the hospice.
The outpatient clinic, Campbell noted, will give patients on-site rapid access to a palliative care doctor.
“They won’t need to wait for an appointment with their family doctor in a busy family practice,” she said. “They won’t have to wait in the emergency department. They will be able to access a palliative-trained doctor quickly when they need it.”
She said the expansion will make patients’ lives easier as they face a life-limiting illness by making the process in which they have to access essential services more convenient.
“I think the key is increasing accessibility for palliative patients and their families, rather than going to different places and having to find parking in different places they know they’re coming to one centre,” Campbell said.
Work on the expansion is expected to be completed by the end of August.
