I feel lucky to be a part of the team at St. Joseph's Hospice.  The hospice truly takes a holistic approach to caring for people with life-limiting illnesses, their families and friends, and their community - providing emotional, spiritual and practical support in addition to the medical and nursing care.

The Day Hospice, social work, complementary therapies, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, medical, nursing, healthcare assistant, chaplaincy, bereavement, and children's bereavement services all work to meet the needs of those with cancer and other life limiting illnesses as well as those of their families and carers.

I work as a palliative care doctor on one of the three in-patient wards at the hospice - we have the capacity to look after 17 patients on our ward (with over 50 beds total capacity in the hospice).  One of the wards is a dedicated respite ward.

St. Joseph's Hospice relies on fundraising to help raise the £11 million required to keep the hospice running every year.

All of the hospice's services are provided free to our patients.

£5 million must be raised from charitable donation while the remainder comes from NHS Primary care Trusts - that means we must raise more than £12,500 a day!  The average patient stay costs around £13,500.

St. Joseph's serves 10 London Boroughs of East and North-East London:  city of London, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, camden, Islington, Enfield, Haringey, Waltham Forest and Redbridge.

Our community palliative care team makes an average of 20 home visits eah day and cares for almost 900 patients at home every year, providing access to specialist nurses, doctors and social workers among others.  Most people with a serious illness prefer to remain at home if they can - our community team works incredibly hard so that people who need palliative care can be supported in their own homes.

There are currently around 30 ethnic groups among our patients.

On average, 110 visitors come to St. Joseph's each day.

St. Joseph's currently has 272 staff members and 233 volunteers.

Some unique features of our hospice you might not know about are...

- There are no set visiting hours on the wards - family, friends, and carers are welcome 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

- There is a drinks trolley that goes around at lunch and dinner - free soft drinks and alcohol for our patients.  

- Patients can opt to have their meals in the lovely dining room in the hospice.

- There are smoking rooms on each ward - if needed, patients can be wheeled into these rooms either in a wheelchair or on their beds if they are bedbound.

- We have a large complementary therapies team who give free treatments (acupuncture, reflexology, massage, Reiki) either on the ward or in the gorgeous Finding Spaces area of the hospice, complete with spa rooms for patients and their families/carers.  There are many classes and groups open to the public - inluding mindfulness, Qigong (chi gong), yoga.

- We encourage our patients to spend time in our award-winning gardens.  Prince Philip came to visit this summer in recognition of our gardens.  The gardens are wheelchair and bed accessible so that our less mobile patients can enjoy time in nature, outside.  I often review patients outside - some days my favourite job has been to wheel patients out into the sunshine and greenery myself!

- There is an emphasis on creating a non-clinical environment and experience for our patients and their families and friends.

If you want to know how you might be able to contribute, donate, or volunteer, please contact Anna Lee at the Hospice (a.lee@stjh.org.uk).

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.