St Christopher's Hospice

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St Christopher's Hospice 2005

The St Christopher's Hospice is a hospice in London district of Sydenham . It was founded in 1967 by Dame Cicely Saunders and is considered the first modern hospice.

history

Cicely Saunders, a British nurse and social worker, gained experience caring for critically ill patients while working at St. Lukes Hospital in London in the 1940s. The inhumane treatment of the dying from their point of view prompted them to get involved in caring for such people. In the hospital she accompanied the Polish Holocaust survivor David Tasma, who bequeathed his £ 500 fortune to her in order to open a house where she died .

It wasn't until almost twenty years later, after intensive research, that she opened St Christopher's Hospice in south-east London, which she ran as Medical Director until 1985. For the first time, this facility offered not only purely medical and nursing care, but also psychological, social and spiritual support. With this new concept, which as palliative care represents the basis of today's palliative medicine , Saunders laid the foundation stone for the modern hospice movement in this hospice.

In 2001, St Christopher's Hospice was awarded the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize .
In 2008, the Harris HospisCare outpatient service merged with St Christopher's Hospice at St Christopher's Bromley to also provide palliative care to dying people at home with their families.

Location and description

The hospice is located in the Sydenham district in south London, near Crystal Palace Park .

A multi-professional team works at St Christopher's Hospice based on the palliative care concept. Specialized specialists in health and nursing (Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) or Specialist Palliative Care Nurses) determine the individual care needs of the patient upon request. They also decide whether the patient can stay at home or have to be admitted to the hospital. If the patient can no longer come for this consultation himself, the palliative care specialist visits him at home. She coordinates the necessary medical, nursing and other therapeutic services, which can also be provided on an outpatient basis. Depending on your needs, it arranges general practitioners or palliative medicine specialists for medical care, as well as social workers , pastors , psychiatrists , physiotherapists , occupational therapists and volunteers . Practical nursing support is provided by specially qualified nursing staff. The merger with the Harris HospisCare outpatient care service ensures outpatient care in the southeastern districts of Bromley , Croydon , Lambeth , Lewisham and Southwark .

The stationary hospice offers space for 48 guests, spread over four wards. Single rooms with their own toilet and four-bed rooms are available. Around the hospice there are other rooms and buildings for various purposes, including the Anniversary Center as a meeting center for guests and relatives. In addition to a café, it offers regular events, some of which are open to the public. Grieving children and families can receive support from the St Christopher's Candle Project .

Guests can take part in additional therapeutic measures such as massages, aromatherapy, and reflexology, and work with the in-house music and art therapists. These measures are offered both in groups and in individual care so that bedridden guests can also take part.

Various educational and research programs for hospice and palliative care are also carried out in the facility.

literature

  • Martina Holder-Franz: St. Christopher's Hospice. In: »... that you can live to the last.« Spirituality and Spiritual Care at Cicely Saunders. Theological Publishing House Zurich, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-290-17637-2 .

documentation

  • 1971: 16 days left. A death clinic in London. Reinhold Iblacker, Siegfried Braun
  • 2018: Horizon: We Need to Talk about Death. Kevin Fong, Steve Crabtree (BBC Studios, The Science Unit)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c H. Christof Müller-Busch: The beginnings - Cicely Saunders. In: Maria Wasner, Sabine Pankofer (eds.): Social work in palliative care. A manual for study and practice. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3170222625 , pp. 35-39.
  2. ↑ stchristophers.org.uk/about/facts ; Retrieved April 28, 2016
  3. ^ Harris HospisCare with St Christopher's Hospice annual review 2009/10 (PDF). stchristophers.org.uk. Retrieved February 24, 2016.
  4. ↑ St Christopher's annual review 2015/16 stchristophers.org.uk. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
  5. ↑ St Christopher's - Inpatient services. stchristophers.org.uk. Retrieved February 24, 2016.
  6. ↑ Candle: Someone has died suddenly stchristophers.org.uk. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
  7. ↑ St Christopher's - Arts and Complimentary Therapies stchristophers.org.uk. Retrieved May 25, 2018

Coordinates: 51 ° 25 '20.3 ​​"  N , 0 ° 3' 28.8"  W.