Palliative Care is about improving the quality of life at the end of life. It is provided in homes, hospitals, care homes and hospices. It can improve the quality of a person’s life throughout the course of their illness.
Facilitated by All Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care (AIIHPC) Palliative Care Week ran from 14- 18th September this year.
ICP Community Pharmacist Lynn McCausland co-chairs the Southern Palliative Care Network and during palliative care week Lynn highlighted the importance of advance care planning and encouraged people to make use of the Macmillan and Public Health Agency booklet Your life and your choices: plan ahead’
“Talking to family about end of life and palliative care can be scary, but planning ahead can make a huge difference. Community pharmacies can play an important role in providing information and encouraging people to plan ahead.
“The booklet gives lots of information about advance care planning and is for anyone who wishes to plan ahead, whether they have a serious illness or not. Details are available from your local community pharmacy and they can also offer you advice and information about local support.”
To view the Palliative Care booklet click here.
As part of palliative care week, the Western Integrated Care Partnerships hosted an online conference “End of Life as a natural part of living – a community development approach’. This event brought community sector organisations together to focus on death and dying and the role that local communities can plan in providing support.
This was an especially important conversation in light of the COVID 19 restrictions on wakes and funerals.
One outcome of the workshop was an opportunity to collaborate with the Public Health Agency’s Health Improvement Team to organise ‘Life’s Road Trip’ Here and Now Arts festival”
Working with 30 local artists, this 6 month long event promotes a public health approach to beginning discussions around palliative care, using Marie Curie’s ‘Talk About’ conversation cards and facilitated arts sessions, within care homes, short break centres, community organisations and settings.
In keeping with the theme of the arts, Margaret Rowlandson, Western ICPs Northern Sector Carers representative, shared some beautiful and powerful poetry with Foyle Hospice Compassionate Communities project. ‘A Women’s reflection of life after the death of her husband’ https://compassionatecommunitiesnw.com/2020/10/26/life-after-death/
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