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The St John's Hospice Inpatient Unit in St John's Wood.

Inpatient care

At our Inpatient Unit in St John’s Wood we provide specialist 24-hour care including end-of-life care, symptom control, respite and palliative care rehabilitation.

Our Inpatient Unit

Our Inpatient Unit is based within our hospice in St John’s Wood. Here, we can support you to get difficult symptoms under control, provide rehabilitation or respite to support you to live as independently as possible or to support your carers. Many of our patients are admitted for just a short while and are then discharged back home. We also provide end-of-life care for patients who are in the advanced stage of their illness.

We have a mixture of single en-suite rooms and two single-sex three-bedded bays and will do our best to accommodate your choice of room. All our rooms are on the ground floor giving you easy access to our secluded garden. As well as our garden, we have a lounge area and a dedicated Children’s Room, where you can spend time with other patients, your visitors or on your own if you would like to spend some time outside of your room.

As an inpatient, you will be cared for by our multi-disciplinary team, which includes doctors and nurses working alongside our therapists, social workers, bereavement counsellors and volunteers.

What we can offer you

  • Care for patients who require specialist care in the last days of their life.
  • Complex symptom control to help with a range of symptoms including pain, nausea and vomiting, breathlessness, constipation and anxiety.
  • Respite care to allow your family and carers a period of rest.
  • Rehabilitation following palliative care treatments to help you regain physical function and independence. This can include access to physio- and occupational therapies.
  • Complementary therapies including massage, reflexology, reiki and acupuncture. These can help to promote wellbeing, a sense of relaxation and relieve some of your symptoms.
  • Emotional and practical support and advice from our social workers, helping with any anxieties or concerns that you or those close to you may have. This includes providing support with benefits, housing, Wills, lasting power of attorney or financial matters.
  • Spiritual support for people of all or no faiths.

Who we care for

We recognise that illness does not discriminate - it affects people regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality or beliefs. We care for any person living with a life-limiting illness - including cardiac, respiratory, or renal conditions, HIV, cancer, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's - and at different stages of their illness.

All of the care we provide is completely free of charge and available to anyone aged 18 or over living within our service catchment area. Sometimes we can care for people even if they live outside of this area, for example, when a close family member or friend lives within our catchment.

We do not exclude people who might have learning disabilities, a history of mental health or substance use. We can also support you if you have no fixed abode or limited immigration status.

“You will never understand how blessed we felt being in this hospice and it being where our Mum was. You are so much more than clinical care. The word my Mum used a lot for your staff was kind. Kindness meant a lot to Mum and we saw it for ourselves when we stayed there for 5 nights."

– A patient’s daughter.

How you can access the Inpatient Unit

We welcome referrals for patients living within Westminster, Brent, Camden, Islington, Hammersmith & Fulham, and Kensington & Chelsea. Referrals can be made to us by your GP, hospital doctor, nurse specialist or community nurse or by other professionals working across health and social care services. If you would like to visit the hospice prior to referral or admission, please contact us using the details below.

If you are a health or social care professional and wish to refer a patient and/or their family members to our services, please download and complete a Specialist Palliative Care Referral Form. The form is available to download below. Please return the completed form by email to nhsnwl.stjohnsreferrals@nhs.net.

Please note
In working hours (Monday - Friday 8:30 am – 4:30 pm) referrals received in the morning are triaged the same afternoon, and those received in the afternoon are triaged the following working day. If urgent, please follow up the referral by calling us on 020 7806 4040 and we will attempt to triage the referral as soon as we receive it. Out of hours, urgent referrals will be discussed with the consultant on call.

Download the form

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