On any one day St Christopher’s Hospice cares for around 800 people in their homes. DAVID MILLS looks at how it pioneered hospice care in the community.

WITH the help of St Christopher’s, breast cancer sufferer Peggy Willis has the independence of her own home.

The 88-year-old who lives in Penge is visited by the hospice’s home nurses once a week, but they remain on 24-hour call.

St Christopher’s, the first of the modern hospices, brought about a revolution when founder Dame Cicely Saunders opened the hospice in Sydenham in 1967, by pioneering ways of looking after the dying.

Two years later hospice care arrived in the home, where it has developed worldwide ever since with more than 300 home care teams in the UK today.

The service began with a nurse going into a patient’s home to find out not just medical history and symptoms but the patient and family’s emotional, social and spiritual needs.

Following this the nurse would present her findings to the whole team and future management of the patient’s needs would be discussed.

Peggy’s cancer became unstable last September and three months later she lost her husband James.

Her clinical nurse specialist Phillipa Sellar has the challenging role of co-ordinating Peggy’s care, which involves sourcing information from her GP and hospitals.

Mrs Sellar said: “The biggest thing is Peggy’s husband died, which compounded her illness.

“My job is about looking at a person and their needs and overseeing it all.

“When you see a person in their home you get a real sense of what the biggest problem is to that person.”

But what kind of person does it take to help a terminally ill patient and their family meet the emotional challenges of their illness?

Director of nursing Penny Hansford said: “Nurses are professional human beings, acting with compassion and empathy.

“When visiting sick patients it is important for staff to remain resilient and professional and not to be detached.

“It’s about saying to yourself this is not my pain or illness but about staying alongside patients and families, which brings massive rewards for staff.

“The rewards are knowing you have helped a family and patient and actually helped to bring out the strength and resources of that family, so there's a sense of achievement.

“Had the St Christopher’s nurse not been there, that person may not have died in the place of their choice.

“Getting to know a family well at that point in their life is incredibly rewarding.”

Great-grandmother-of-seven Peggy said: “The nurses seem to know what's the matter before I really explain it.

“It's that understanding which is special.”

ST CHRISTOPHER'S IN NUMBERS

£14 million is the total amount St Christopher's needs this year to carry on providing its services

28 per cent of this is paid for by the NHS, for the rest it relies on the generosity of the community

2,000 patients are looked after by the hospice each year

£10 covers the cost of a day's meals for a patient on one of the wards

5,000 health and social care professionals were trained by the hospice's education programmes in 2007/08