St. Petersburg Children's Hospice

St. Petersburg Children's Hospice

place	St. Petersburg , Russia
Clinic Managing Director	Archpriest Alexander Tkachenko
areas of expertise	Palliative care
founding	2003
Website	www.kidshospice.ru

The medical facility “Children's Hospice ” ( Russian Медицинское учреждение, “Детский хоспис” ) is a non-profit institution providing pediatric palliative care for minors under the age of 18. It is the first children's hospice in Russia .

The St. Petersburg Children's Hospice has two facilities in St. Petersburg . The children's hospice offers physical, psychological, social and spiritual support and accompaniment for children with serious and incurable diseases .

history

The St. Petersburg Children's Hospice began its work in 2003 under the direction of Archpriest Alexander Tkachenko. In 2010, the children's hospice became the first state institution of pediatric palliative care in Russia. The first inpatient facility was opened in the “Kurakina Datscha” building, the former orphanage “Nikolajewskij”. The second facility for children from the Leningrad administrative region and other regions of Russia was established in the village of Olgino in the spa district of St. Petersburg.

At the beginning of its work, the children's hospice was a visiting service that consisted of doctors , social workers , nurses and psychologists . The aim was to ensure outpatient care for terminally ill children and their families.

The St. Petersburg Children's Hospice served as a model for the establishment of such institutions in the city and the Moscow administrative region, as well as in other regions of Russia.

The opening of an inpatient facility in St. Petersburg was preceded by seven years of work by the hospice staff. On June 1, 2010, on his seventh birthday, the St. Petersburg Children's Hospice opened the doors of a “fairy tale house” for seriously ill children.

One of the sickrooms on the day-and-night ward

On November 21, 2011, Federal Law 323 “Basics of Health Protection in the Russian Federation ” was passed, into which Article 36 “Medical Palliative Assistance” was inserted through the initiative of the St. Petersburg Children's Hospice. The children's hospice staff were involved in developing methodological materials for professionals and parents.

In the years 2012–2013 several centers for medical palliative care were opened in the administrative areas of Leningrad and Moscow under the auspices of the St. Petersburg Children's Hospice.

In 2011 the founder of the children's hospice, Archpriest Alexander Tkachenko, was awarded the “For Faith and Faithfulness” prize by the Andreas-der-Erstberufene-Stiftung. In March 2013, Tkachenko and the Executive Director of the Children's Hospice Pavel Krupnik received certificates of honor from the Federation Council , the upper house of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. In 2014 Tkachenko received the state award “For Charity” from Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

Structure of the children's hospice

The visiting service of the St. Petersburg Children's Hospice has been active since its inception. The aim of the service is to support the families cared for by the hospice through regular visits by doctors, nurses, psychologists and social workers and to provide medical, nursing and psychological advice and assistance. The service looks after around 300 children in St. Petersburg and in the Leningrad administrative region.

The day-and-night care ward is designed for around-the-clock care of 20 patients and 10 patients in the day care ward. A child's stay in the care unit serves to stabilize the child's state of health and, if possible, to improve it, and to offer the caregiving relatives a chance to relax. The same range of services is available to the children in the day care ward as in the day and night care ward, but they do not stay in the hospice overnight.

The intensive care unit consists of hospital rooms designed for round-the-clock observation of children in the terminal state .

administration

The director of the St. Petersburg Children's Hospice is Alexander Tkachenko, archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church . He is also considered to be the main initiator for the development of pediatric palliative care as a separate specialty of Russian medicine.

financing

According to data from 2013, the city budget of the St. Petersburg State Autonomous Health Institution “Children's Hospice” allocates around 50 million rubles a year. The non-profit medical facility “Children's Hospice” is financed exclusively through donations.