The best place to die?
| 19:06 UK time, Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Hi, I'm posting this on behalf of Nicola Rattray, communications manager at St Christopher's Hospice in south London.
World Have Your Say will be broadcasting from St Christopher's Hospice on Thursday 20th January as part of the 91Èȱ¬ Extremes series. A report by the , published in July 2010, said that due to the quality of palliative care on offer, the UK is the best place in the world to die.
We'll be talking to patients and their families to ask them how they feel about facing their illnesses and what St Christopher's has been able to offer them.
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St Christopher's Hospice was founded in 1967 by Dame Cicely Saunders and is now regarded as the first of the 'modern hospices'.
We provide palliative care delivered by specialist doctors and nurses to dying people from five south London Boroughs, covering a diverse population of around 1.5 million people.
We care for people with cancer as well as other serious illnesses, including Motor Neurone Disease, heart failure, chest and kidney disease. Everyone is welcome at St Christopher's, whatever their race, religion or lifestyle.
Our vision is of a world in which all dying people and those close to them have access to appropriate care and support when they need it, wherever they need it and whoever they are. Education and research is at the heart of our mission and we train around 7,000 people a year from around the world through an extensive education programme.
Most of our care is given in patient's own homes - which is where most people prefer to be. We look after around 800 people at home each day (24 hours a day, seven days a week).
We also have four inpatient wards at the hospice as well as our new Anniversary Centre, where patients and their friends/families can come any day of the week between 8am - 9pm.
The Anniversary Centre has been designed to create a modern environment for patients and their families and contains a spacious social centre; a suite of consultation rooms (for clinical appointments); group rooms (where support groups or creative arts groups are held); a bathing suite; a hairdressing salon and a purpose built rehabilitation gym (for individual physiotherapy appointments and daily groups such as breathless or Pilates).
The Anniversary Centre enables people to get much more out of a single hospice visit and we are very grateful to our tireless volunteers without whom this new concept of care would not work.
Our services cost over £14million each year. Just over a third comes from the NHS and as a registered charity we need to raise the remaining £9million every year. We are very grateful to all our supporters who enable us to deliver our patient and families services free of charge.
Post your questions and comments about St Christopher's here.
