OTAGO HOSPICE EMBRACES LEVEL 2 FOR HOSPICE AWARENESS WEEK

Otago Community Hospice CEO Ginny Green says Hospice staff were entering Hospice Awareness Week with some new freedoms around service provision in the community with high priority home visits now allowed.

“Our team are always in the community caring for our vulnerable patient and family population and so having to provide that care from afar has been tough. And although much of our services will still be provided virtually at Level 2, it’s good to know that those who really need us in their homes, can now have us in their homes again,” says Ms Green.

“Our Community team have all adapted brilliantly to this new style of working from afar, but I know that many of them are looking forward to the day we can return to the norm being the face-to-face care which Hospice is so well known for.”

The Otago Community Hospice has the Otago region well catered for with its palliative specialist team of six Doctors, 13 Community Care Coordinators, three Nurse Practitioners, three Counsellors, two Social Workers, two Spiritual Coordinators and a Kaitakawaenga.

“Our Inpatient Unit remains under quite strict controls, and our general staff are still going to be working from home, so this Hospice Awareness Week is quite a strange place for us to be.

But we also want to remind the community that we are still with them, walking beside those who are facing end of life, and providing that service we are so well known for in this Otago region.

This Hospice Awareness Week, we just want to say thank you to everyone in our community for joining forces to enable us to be heading in the right direction and at Level 2 now,” says Ms Green.

ENDS

For more information contact:

Ginny Green, CEO, Otago Community Hospice, 027 487 2345