Saint Francis Hospice
Filling gaps in Out of Hours palliative consultant provision due to staffing changes and consultant gaps which put the OOH rota under significant pressure.
Services used
Fact file:
- Location: Havering-atte-Bower, Romford, Essex
- Capacity: Hospice Ward with 18 beds
- Staff Numbers: 250 staff members; 700 volunteers
- Additional Services: Hospice Inpatient care, Hospice at Home and 24/7 Advice Line, Day care (therapies and wellbeing services), Bereavement support services for adults and children, OrangeLine services for people facing loneliness and isolation.
The challenge
The partnership with SCUK began in 2022 due to palliative consultant staffing pressures across both the neighbouring acute trust (Barking & Havering) and the hospice, who share a joint OOH rota. Due to loss of consultants and recruitment gaps, the regional Consultant OOH rota came under significant pressure
Our solution
SCUK stepped in to fill rota lines, ensuring safe, reliable consultant coverage during a period of instability.
Our support helped provide:
- expert OOH Consultant cover, affording the regional team OOH rest weeks, and thus maintaining their resilience and local continuity of care
- business continuity (no services were reduced or closed)
- a stable fallback option during additional (e.g. annual leave) staffing shortage
- quality support for the hospice ward 1st on call doctors and also the community CNSs – with positive feedback on quality of advice provided. Signposting to further learning resources regarding complex symptom control or ethical challenges for their own CPD was also appreciated.
Over the past few years, SCUK has continued to supplement the consultant OOH rota, allowing permanent consultants to maintain a more sustainable and reasonable OOH working pattern, with confidence in the quality of advice/support given.
Impact and outcomes
The relationship has been very positive, with strong engagement and good collaboration. Escalation processes and communication pathways have worked smoothly, supported by good team cooperation. SCUK has worked flexibly alongside the service to bolster existing provision, rather than replace it.
Now that Saint Francis is back to full working capacity, SCUK has been able to step aside, while remaining a trusted partner for any future additional support needs.
“With neighbourhood health of core focus moving forward, our teams even more stretched as funding gets ever tighter and a population of nearly 1 million to serve, finding creative ways of accessing end of life consultant input virtually is becoming pressing. At Saint Francis we look forward to continuing our collaborative relationship with Supportive Care UK to explore innovative ways of providing the very best palliative care”.
