Marie Curie in Durham: meeting urgent need

In County Durham, Marie Curie has been commissioned to provide a rapid response service. This is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and means terminally ill people and their families and carers can get urgent support in the event of a crisis.

It helps reduce pressure on local health and social care services, cut the risk of unplanned hospital admissions, and means people can be discharged to spend their final days at home.

The challenge: support needed to stop people dying in hospital, rather than at home

Terminally ill people and their families might sometimes need urgent support. It could be that a patient’s symptoms have suddenly become much worse, that a family member needs help to support their loved one to die at home, or that a district nurse needs expert advice on medicine administration.

If such advice cannot be quickly found, then the result may be that people are taken to hospital. This is often not where they want to be at the end of the life.

The solution: rapid response service

We have partnered with the local NHS to provide a rapid response nursing service. Marie Curie nurses and senior healthcare assistants with special training in end of life care can offer information and advice over the phone, and urgent hands-on care in people’s homes.

This helps reduce pressure on local health and social care services, cut the risk of unplanned hospital admissions, and means people can be discharged to spend their final days at home.